First up is how I’m finding the abandoned crash sites:

I’m using Emergency Charts to force out all 5 location markers and flying to the distress beacon that doesn’t have a pilot walking around. Over time I’ve figured out the easiest way to make sure you’re not flying to the wrong distress beacon every time is to pick a planet, go there, and use the charts one at a time until you get the first distress beacon. Fly to it and make note of which one it is, then go to a different planet to force out the remaining location markers.

One thing to keep in mind is that if you perform any kind of reload in a different system, it will reset your “cleared” locations. So if you’re a couple hours into checking sites in a system, you’re kinda screwed lol. I would suggest not leaving the system at all until you’re comfortable that you’ve done everything you’re going to do.

Ok, crash sites.. I in no way hold any of this to be concrete fact, it’s merely what I’ve observed after checking countless crash sites. I play in normal mode on Switch and have no need for anything from the sites except the ship, so I blow thru them pretty quick lol.

A ship model that is found at C-Class crash sites can occasionally be found at B-Class sites.

A ship model found at B-Class crash sites will only ever ALWAYS be found at B-Class sites.

A ship model found at A-Class sites can very rarely be found at S or B-Class sites.

(I really hope I’m making sense so far lol)

I’ve found exotics in every type of system with any type of economy/race and any number of planets/moons. If it’s in the systems pool, I suspect it can be found abandoned. It’s just a matter of how long your willing to look.

From what I’ve seen, any given system will pull 4, maybe 5, ships+Exotic from it’s pool to place at crash sites. So they repeat a lot.

Augments:

After scrapping.. God knows how many ships, I believe I’ve found the most efficient way to get augments. Either play in custom mode or get your character to the point where I’m at so you’re only at the crash site for a half a second to look at the ship. What you’re after is shuttles, specifically, A-Class shuttles worth about ~$15m and up (and obviously take any S-Classes you find lol.)

Ever since I started taking only those specific shuttles, I’ve been consistently getting 8-9 (sometimes more, most was 14) augments out of every 10 ships that I scrap.

I hope any of this is helpful to at least some of you weary travelers out there 🤗

If I leave the planet now will my old ship disappear. I don’t have a freighter which I hear is used to store ships. I tried looking it up but do to all the different versions of the game I got some conflicting answers

Experiment 1: I made a new save to do the latest expedition and I wanted to see if I could visit a base created with my previous save. I went to a system discovered by previous me where I had a base next to the portal. The base was not there. It appears that, even though your bases are always there even when you log off, if you switch to a different save they disappear. I did still have credit for discovering the system, though.
Experiment 2: You know how when you find a ship you like and you hang around until another of the same ship lands, it might be a little better or a little worse in terms of number of slots and/or core stats. I wanted to find out if I got the absolute best of a C class and upgraded it to an S, would it be the best possible S class of that ship. I found a solar I liked and found the best possible C class of that ship and flew it to the space station. After upgrading it S, it still a had good number of slots, but only middle-tier core stats. So, no, that didn’t work.