I read somewhere that every planet has a portal on it. According to the advertising and the in-game dialog, there are over 18 quintillion planets in NMS total.

If the portal has 16 glyphs to choose from, and there are 12 glyphs in a portal address, that should be 16^12, which is over 281 trillion different portal addresses. So I read somewhere else there are 256 galaxies, and the portals are only intra-galaxy (cannot portal you to a different galaxy than the source), so if we multiply 281 trillion by 256, we get roughly 72 quadrillion portal addresses spread over the 256 galaxies. That’s 3 orders of magnitude shy of 18 quintillion.

Is some of this information incorrect, or am I missing something else? Or could it be that not every planet has a portal? I would think some of the barren ones might not, since they seem to have no other buildings, but I don’t usually spend much time on them.

I would think it’s not realistically possible for anyone to scour an entire planet manually searching for a portal, so it would be extremely difficult to visually prove that no portal exists on any given planet, but unless some of those numbers are wrong, I would think it has to be that some planets don’t contain portals.

Just feeling extra math-nerdy tonight, and was curious if anyone had any information about the claim that every planet had a portal.

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Below are a few popular questions that we’ve received from our past FAQ thread. As always we ask that everyone be respectful and we welcome everyone’s contribution so have fun!

Q- I’m keen to start a new passive money making pursuit. What are some good ideas or guides post-Waypoint?

A#1-Gold farm, then take that stack and sell it at a terminal (not traders) in systems that sell gold. Sell all your gold to the terminal and crash the economy. Then buy it all back at 80% off discount. You just got free money and keep all the gold. All this takes is an initial investment on a gold farm, then you carry all that gold with you and just sell/buy back when you get to another system that sells gold. With 50 stacks in my ship’s cargo hold, I can make somewhere around 150 million units in each system I do this in.

A#2-Start a Farm, Fusion Igniters or Statis Devices Farm which will increase your profits to 100- 200 mil fairly quickly and you can even send out multiple freighter missions which will help you get aronium, magno-gold, Enriched carbon and more which will increase the profits even more.

A#3-Quickest way I’ve found to make a TON of units: Harvesting Storm Crystals. Find a VERY hot planet that has frequent fire storms. DURING STORMS ONLY – you can see the bright white light from Storm Crystals if you fly around low enough. Fly to them, land, quickly harvest them, get back in your ship and fly to the next before you burn up. Q-Where can I post ships and other cool stuff that I want to share with the public? A-You can always post on this sub and now the NMSGlyphExchange is live! Q-How do I get the Advanced Mining Laser? I don’t have the option to craft one, and the multi-tool upgrade vendor at the space station doesn’t have the blueprint for sale.

A-In order to get it, you have to look for the blueprints in crashed ships or abandoned facilities. You get it from the main story (awakenings) or you can buy it on the anomaly.

Q-What do I actually do in the game? I finished the tutorial, is there anything else beside gathering stuff, building a base and repeat?

A#1-It’s really whatever you want, there’s a base story, (assuming you haven’t completed it already), follow the quest log and you’ll figure it out, but things You’d want to do for end game? You can collect multiple multitools, ships, built a fleet for your freighter, etc.

Q-Is there a planet that is populated by many players, and they built their base close to each others like a city?

A- Yeah its the Galactic Hub Project, Its a place where many people have bases and each day the numbers grow. Please help yourself. There are many factions in NMS that do this, even NMS Pirates Hub.

Q-I’m still pretty early into the game, just making my way to the center of the galaxy, what should I be spending my credits on?

A-Go hang around a outlaw/pirate trading post. Cheapest S-class start at around 8-8.5 million without a trade-in. I recommend Vikeen pirate, as then you have two good and 1 remote chances at high-maneuverability S-class: fighter, solar, exotic.