Five years ago I wrote this:

“I cannot wait to boot up the game and just walk in any direction, exploring. To see what’s behind that cliff, or what’s inside that deep mysterious cave. Imagine climbing a mountain during sunset and just take a break up there. Hearing the wind and see how day slowly turns into night. Seeing blinking stars appear in the nightsky. Knowing that if you want to, you can get your own spaceship and visit those stars. I’m definitely ready to lose myself in this game. Experience the feeling of being completely lost somewhere and not knowing what to come next”.

This dilemma still holds up to this day.

It’s one of those games you can play however you want. As an adult with a full-time job and family, I value the chill exploration. No need to “keep up” with anything.

The link below is an email I wrote to Hello Games in September 2016:

(https://www.reddit.com/r/nomanshigh/comments/57z3rr/just_got_a_response_from_hello_games_today/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=mweb)

With an incredible team as HG and their hard work, I can’t be anything else than grateful for what you’ve done for the game and yet alone, the community ❤️

Thank you.

// M a r c u s

There are a number of player formed civilizations in NMS, but the game itself doesn’t have any kind of system for forming and joining civilizations. Given the current state of multiplayer, with most players having access to the same universe, now would be a good time to implement such a system. Not entirely a new concept, but some features might include:

• The ability to form a civilization and recruit other players. Civ names can appear next to players’ gamertags/usernames that are members of a civilization.
• A governance system where players can create ranks that have different privileges.
• Players could create custom flags for their civs.
• Claiming starsystems and planets as part of a civilization.
• co-ownership and management of bases, settlements, and freighters.

Now a system like this would probably go hand in hand with a major settlement overhaul, as part of the same or separate update. Settlements could act as the hearts of civilizations as players work together to grow, maintain, and defend settlements across their civs. A settlement update might include:

• More freedom over where a settlement is established, what players can build in a settlement, the layout of settlement specific buildings, and the number of settlements a player (or civ) can own.
• Settlement requirements like food, water, hazard protection, life support, power, and housing.
• Implementing the existing farming, mining, power, and cooking mechanics in the game.
• The ability to establish trade routes via frigates between settlements and bases. Trade routes may need to be defended against pirates from time to time.
• Settlement building that serve specific functions and can be damaged or destroyed during sentinel attacks.
• Set up defenses against sentinel attacks.

What do you guys think? Is this an update you’d like to see at some point? Are there any other features you’d want implemented in a civilization update?

I was indulging in a little bit of light piracy yesterday, and after destroying several waves of Sentinels and their capital ship, the very next merchant freighter I attacked started the whole response routine all over again. After killing two of their capital ships and realising they still weren’t getting the message, I just went back to ignoring them entirely, which is pretty easy to do with just the one ship which tries to stop you at alert level 1.

Maybe I’m missing something obvious here, but it seems like destroying a Sentinel capital ship ought to disable them in that system for a period of time, the same as destroying the pillar on a planet does?