https://preview.redd.it/g53xc9gnh4yc1.jpg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c086bb552629eeff8a644affb54e2f1bd84ce3c5

Just clarifying, I know the drill. Go to a Portal, and travel to the closest planet to the core. Swap to a ship and multi-tool used only “to break” by the jumping. Remove all the exosuit upgrades then head to the core and jump. Wait for all the jump animation to finish. When you arrive, build a base in the new galaxy, fix the ship to allow it to fly, find another portal, activate the glyphs, and repeat the process.

If you want to have access to all galaxies without depending on anyone you will need to do it at least 255 times! And even though the steps above reduce the cost of the trip, you still need to spend fixing the ship, activating portals, warp cells and building a base. Also unless you do all 255 galaxies in one run, which can take hours, you will need to remove and return your upgrades every time you stop and restart this process. I have more than 40 upgrades in my exosuit tech storage. Because they are already optimised to use the supercharged slots, I need to move these upgrades in a way to keep them in the same slot when I return them, which is very time-consuming in not a good way.

Another issue is that in the end, you will have your base list so cluttered with bases to access galaxies in your terminal, that will make it a nightmare to find the base you need, given the teleporter has no sorting or search options.

It doesn’t make sense to me. I mean it is a game in which the main focus is “exploration“, what is the point of making it so hard and annoying to explore other galaxies?

What I am asking is simple, the possibility to travel to any galaxy without someone’s help or the need to catalogue all galaxies.

There are many ways that it could be done. Here is one example that could be made without changing the current mechanic too much:

In this idea Atlas Station is connected to one and only one of the 255 Galaxies. So we need at least 256 Atlas Stations in each Galaxy. The community will have the role of identifying which A.S. is linked to each galaxy. My point to suggest using the Atlas Stations is because they are a cool feature that, after the “Atlas Path” mission, become kind of useless, a glorified Iteration Helios, also I think it makes some sense in the game’s lore.

My suggestion:

• The player travels to the Atlas Station linked to the galaxy he/she wants to go.
• In exchange for something (maybe a Heart of the Sun, to give some use to these bunch of blueprints we get during Atlas Path), you get a token for the Galaxy you are going from the Atlas Station.
• You keep that token in the exosuit or ship inventory.
• Then the process is the same as the current mechanic. You head to the core and jump, things still break, but instead, it takes you to the next galaxy, it will take you to the token’s galaxy.
• After the jump token is consumed and removed from your inventory.
• If you are not carrying any token, it will take you to the next galaxy as it is currently.
• If you are carrying more than one token, the priority will be the one in the top leftmost slot of the Exosuit.

Pros:

• Give the player the freedom to fly to any galaxy, any time.
• Don’t change the current mechanic, just add a new feature.
• Avoid unnecessary bases cluttering in the teleporter.
• It is way cheaper than the current mechanic, once you don’t have to jump to each galaxy to get the one you want.

Cons:

• It is less but still annoying, moving upgrades, fixing things, etc.
• If you want to visit all the galaxies, that solution doesn’t help.

There are other solutions that could make things even easier, like using the Atlas Stations as a portal in itself, nothing breaks, etc. But I think it’s good not to make things too easy either, just not as punishing as today.

I hope HG address that one day.

53h of play and I encountered the first blackhole. Didn’t explore it further. I was a bit afraid of it.