There is a time and place for such things in design that goes beyond just wasting people’s time.

Constructive uses for it are either:

a) Short term – make people stick around for a bit, a mandatory mini-break as whatever countdown is ticking down is doing its thing. The first settlement building does that with its <3 minute timer steps. You look around the settlement, take in the scenery, and all that jazz. Given how short it is it usually does not register als negative.

b) Long Term – build anticipation. THIS is where one hour and up timers clock in, but there’s just one massive flaw with the current settlement timers: nothing we have seen so for justfies any sort of anticipation. A market building that has zero mechanical functionality? A house for npcs? As a player I couldn’t give two shits about that. That’s just filler on the side to strech the way to the actually good stuff – which usually is “stuff that allows you to do things that you usually could not do in the game previously”.

There sure is quite some potential to what those “new possibility” buildings can be, from building your own portal to production facilities to (and this now is super wishful thinking for future upgrades) a space hangar for spacecraft building. THAT’s the sort of stuff I’d consider a few hours worth in building the anticipation, even if it is usually unnecessary to have the timer over a hour.

The ONLY other way where high countdowns would be ok would be “overnight projects”. You kick it off before going to bed, and next day you log on happy about your new thing. However, this needs to be stuff one actually looks forward to, instead of “generic random building #324 that increases some internal settlement stat randomy and does nothing for the player”.

Also, having zero interaction with said timer is absolutely stupid if you already set the timers that high. It’s my settlement, let me help by throwing extra resources at it or completing quests (“local wildlife/sentinels is interfering with construction, kill X to speed up process by Y%”)

Time gates have a place in game design, except HG seems to put them in there with the sole and only intent to waste player time. And no, it’s not contributing to the immersion – if it was established for years that you can build a darn LANDING PAD with the click of a button suddenly blocking everything for HOURS is not immersive, it’s just the game giving me the finger. Small timers of a few minutes are immersive. Anything above that is just someone trying to get on my nerves.

As much as I like cruising around the galaxy with my fully kitted-out main character, I really like the beginning stages of the game. I guess it was partly because of doing the achievements and expeditions, but I got addicted to the first few days of game time when your resources and abilities are limited, and I tend to start new characters and level them until I got bored and delete them.

But lately I’ve been setting challenges for myself. It started simple; get to an S-class multitool, ship, and freigter. Okay, that was fun. Full explorer run, maxing out the Explorer’s Guild rep? Cool.

So then I started getting a little more elaborate.

Neural Assembly
You are a stranded alien life form who’s managed to weld themselves to a robotic body, and you’re desperate to re-connect to your people. Put the Ares head on an Autophage body and get to the living ship as fast as possible.

Octopus’ Garden
You are a grumpy octopoid being who just wants to be left alone to make things and get wealthy. Build a base that includes a fully functional production line making fusion ignitors and stasis cores, deep underwater. Wear the Iteration: Gemini head. Use the bubble trail.

My next one’s going to be fun.

Rebel Scum
You are a robot, and that makes you mad. Full-on Autophage run. Get a sentinel S-class ship, an S-class autophage staff or sentinel weapon, and a pirate frigate. Make a seriously badass autophage getup. Max out pirate reputation.

Does anyone else do these little self-created kind-of story-like expeditions? Any other suggestions?

This post will be refreshed every few days. The old post are still available for answering questions in those post.

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 Vykeen pirate, as then you have two good and 1 remote chances at high-maneuverability S-class: fighter, solar, exotic.