When I was six or seven years old, I checked out a copy of Terran Trade Authority: Spacecraft 2000 – 2100 AD by Stewart Crowley and paintings by Colin Hay (1978). This book rocked my world. It wasn’t just that it was filled with gloriously psychedelic paintings of spacecraft by Colin Hay: It also featured commentary and backstory about those ships. My brain was set on fire!
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Fast forward to 2021: I’m a middle aged guy, but I still love spaceships. I stumbled across some NMS screenshots on Reddit, and decided to buy a new Xbox just so I could play this amazing looking game. Everything that I loved about that old book I live in NMS: Piecing together an understanding of alien civilizations through narrative snippets, mysterious alien relics, and the shattered skeletons of wrecked freighters whether they’re half-buried in an ancient landscape or drifting in the cold vacuum.
I finally got my living ship, which has proved to be the climax of an incredible experience. When I first saw it through the neon orange and green clouds of a radioactive superstorm, I was floored. Not only is my ship a color pattern that I wanted, but none of the screenshots I had seen previously did the color-shifting organic shapes justice. Looking around in the cockpit, I was especially tickled by the biological vents spewing a breathable atmosphere for me.
Love at First Sight
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It hit me when I was flying around taking photos of my ship — NMS has captured and recreated the visuals and atmosphere of those old 70s psychedelic space ship paintings I loved so much.
I do fly my living ship (named Ikizukuri), but I finally found my “keeper” end game ship in Eissentam. I’ve loved that the NMS community shares coordinates for cool ships, but it was really important to me (and fun) for me to spend the time finding the exact ship I wanted for myself. I’ve included coordinates for this ship in the attached screenshots, in case anyone playing in Eissentam wants to grab it. I’ve still got a lot more pimping/customization to do on my exotic (named Anima), which is itself a lot of fun. I’m optimizing it for maneuverability and hyperspace range — they’re currently sitting at 877.3 & 2,709.0, which is a good start.
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Long story short — I freaking love this game, since it lets me bring those old 70s psychedelic spaceship paintings I loved as a kid to life. I’m 200 hours in, and there’s still a lot of Eissentam to explore!
