| Things I wish I knew when I was starting out in NMS Posted: 24 Apr 2020 10:34 PM PDT I'm 1700+ hours into NMS, and I've been asked for advice. These are the things I wish I'd known the first time through, as I'm playing through a new start. It's not a complete list, as these are in addition to the common ideas. Note: I play a pacifist game. I don't like to shoot things if I don't have to. I'm an explorer and a xenobiologist. - I don't go to planets with Aggressive Sentinels -- it's not worth the grief. It's not the game I want to play. I'd rather not shoot someone or something, if possible.
- You start with a small MultiTool -- my restart had two slots. You must get the Terrain Manipulator tech. Your second tech should be a Scanner tech, as good as you can get. The S tech I purchased was worth its weight in gold. It had a Rewards bonus for Flora and Fauna scanning of around 7,000%. So, instead of getting 200-500 units for scanning an unknown animal or plant, you might get 10,000 units, or more. Alternatively, you might get one with an increased Scan Radius. It will pay off to prioritize this.
- You can get a second MultiTool. Be picky. You want something with 20+ slots, preferably all 24. This is a long game, so you don't have to have an 24 slot S-class MultiTool right away. My 1100+ hour game uses my trusty 24 slot A-class rifle. I actually have 3; the third was one my son used to experiment with all of the new weapon techs. My 40+ hour game has a 20 slot B MultiTool.
- You can't have every weapon type, so pick one or two and focus. This is true for your MultiTool and your ship(s). My MultiTool has a fully-teched Mining Beam, Boltcaster, and Blaze Javelin. The Scanner is also maxed. Max is the weapon, the tech you can learn (at the Anomaly) and install yourself, and 3 techs you can buy from a MultiTool vendor in a space station. Placement matters! My techs are in a T shape. The Mining Beam is at the junction and there are S class techs at the end of each arm. The remaining, lesser tech, is adjacent to one or preferably two of the S class techs -- in the crook of the arm.
- Ship techs are similar, as are Exosuit techs. Placement matters. There are limits. Living Ships use the T pattern. In Exosuits and Ships you have two kinds of slots -- general slots and tech slots. You can put tech in either one, but cargo only goes in the general slots. Thus, you really want to build a T, if at all possible, in the Tech slots. Even better, put the T + the techs you know into the Tech slots, and add 3 Techs next to each other in the General space. That maximizes your results, but it can fill up your slots very, very quickly. You need slots you don't have (yet). You have to focus!
- You need a Launch Thruster, preferably with the B Efficient Thrusters you know and the S System Recharge Tech you can get. Get all three if you have space.
- You need a Pulse Drive. There are two A techs you know, and you can get 3 more S in one grouping. You want a fast Pulse Drive to be able to outrun pirates, if necessary.
- You need a Hyperdrive. You're looking for range, and you have a lot of techs you can install. I see Squidiculous, my Exotic S squid ship, has 5 in the Tech slots and 5 in the General slots, for a range of 2607.5. Squidiculous is maxed out at 48+21 slots, which took billions of units.
- You need a basic Shield. More is better. I usually get at least the C tech you know how to install, purchased at the Anomaly.
- You need a weapon, to mine asteroids, to blast attackers, and to harvest other resources in space. Pick one. Squidiculous has the Phase Beam and the B class tech from the Anomaly. That's a finer weapon. Then I have 7 techs (5 in general + 2 in tech) for the Positron Ejector. It's a shotgun, so I often hit things I don't intend on hitting, sometimes with consequences. ("Sorry, didn't mean to hit your cargo pod instead of the pirate.") However, it's ridiculously damaging, even with just the two techs I have on my ship in the 40+ hour game. That's my choice. You might prefer something else.
- You want the Teleport Receiver and the Economy Scanner. Trust me.
- In 40ish hours, I now have 48 (the max) general slots in my Exosuit. I'm starting to work on expanding my Tech slots and my Cargo slots. How did I accomplish this?
- Whenever you stop at a new space station, go to the Exosuit Tech. You can buy one slot from their machine. The price increases based on what slot you're trying to buy. The first may be 5,000 units (IIRC), but soon they're costing 170,000, and then much, much more.
- There are tech sellers in back rooms in minor settlements, who will sell you basic tech you can get at the Anomaly. They also sell esoteric and more expensive tech items, including Drop Pod Coordinate Data. They run 85,000 - 105,000 each. Yes, this is more than you would pay at space stations, at the start. As you climb towards your 48th slot, they're a bargain.
- You can occasionally find Drop Pod Coordinate Data at a normal space station terminal. There are two terminals in every space station, along with another back room that may have a nanite terminal in it. Follow the paths on the floor. The choices can be different between the terminals, so you have to check both.
- On some planets, you'll find Alien Data Structures -- little bases with a red cube on top. Find them and collect their information. Most of the time, you'll get Navigation Data, but there's a chance you'll get a Drop Pod Coordinate Data.
- When you have a DPCD, create a Signal Booster. There should be an option to use the DPCD to locate a Drop Pod. Do so. Follow the path to the pod. This almost always works, but I think I've been on worlds with no Drop Pods where it failed, eating the DPCD.
- Drop Pods are always broken. You need to fix them. The recipe is always the same.
- Oxygen and Sodium Nitrate (I just have loads of stuff, so it just works.)
- 55 Ionized Cobalt. I buy Cobalt or mine the hexagonal columns in my caves which are pure cobalt. Then I load that into the Portable Refiner tech (in my Exosuit) I got following the story line. That converts 2 Cobalt --> 1 Ionized Cobalt.
- Antimatter. You need Condensed Carbon and Chromatic Metal (I'm a walking grab bag of elements.)
- Fix the Drop Pod, claim the suit slot, and move on. I always fly with the view from outside the cabin, so I can see the landscape more clearly as I fly. You can spot Drop Pods from the air, if you're lucky.
- You should always be scanning. You should be collecting Navigation Data and Salvage Data. I scan the area for the latter wherever I stop, and I often go on runs to collect it.
- You may also run across Storage Augmentations (add slot to ship) or Salvaged Freighter Modules (buy Freighter tech). Use the former to improve your ship. Store the latter away for when you get a Freighter.
- Take the Navigation Data to the Cartographer on the station and exchange maps. There are four types of maps, all of which have their uses. Early on, you want several Emergency Maps. You'll need all four during the game, but now, the Emergency and the Alien ones are most useful.
- You can have up to six ships. In my 40+ hour game, I'm already up to 4, and I'm not sure how I got there. The goal is to use the Emergency Maps to find crashed ships to salvage and crashed freighters to dive for resources. It's expensive to completely repair a ship, because typically you need many, many Wiring Looms, which are not cheap. You are, however, in no rush. You have choices:
- Claim the ship as one more for your Fleet. Repair the Launch Thrusters, Pulse Engine, and Shield, which should let you launch and get you to the space station. Once there, go to the Ship station and scrap it. Make sure you have six or seven slots in your Exosuit, for the results of the scrap. Typically, this gets you a Tech Blueprint and five or so Things To Sell. Your old ship should show up in the station bay. If you get Activated Copper, you'll want to keep it around somewhere (base storage unit), because you'll need it to repair broken slots. It's not easy to find or buy at this stage of the game.
- Claim, repair as much as you can, and fly it back to your base. Work on it over time, as you have money and materials. You can summon your other ship to the base, if you want it. If you have a Freighter, the ship will show up in the landing bays. (This is what happened with Lucent, which I was going to scrap, but didn't have Exosuit slots. It's now my main ship, a C 23+3 Fighter. The C 25+2 Hauler is the latest. The B 26+7 Shuttle needs more tech, but will probably be the one I fly more frequently for a while. The C 15+4 Fighter was the first.)
- You can use the ship as part of the cost of buying a better one. That's how I got the Shuttle. Wow. I just flew the C 15+4 to the station to scrap it. By being willing to sell all my silver, mined in space and purchased, I had just enough to swap it for an A 23+6 Shuttle worth $2.1m!
- Storage Augmentations improve a ship's size for free, which you can get to 48+21 in many cases. The upgrade costs are steep. It is billions of units to pay for it. Of course, if you have that much money, it's not a problem. The 1100+ game has the maximum allowable amount of money in the game -- over $4 billion. I've paid to upgrade a couple of my ships.
- Scrapping larger ships will get more scrap parts, tech blueprints, and maybe a Storage Augmentation or two. Farming that process is for later in the game. Right now, you should be salvaging ships to improve your day-to-day ship. Yes, there are hacks to get you free max S class ships out there. It's more fun to do it yourself. I just took Squidiculous out of the hangar for the first time in a while, and was amazed at how fast and maneuverable it was compared to the Living Ship Etude for Three Quasars.
- Playing the story, you'll build a base, probably out of wood to start. Go out and dig up those Salvaged Data. I can find 100 in an hour or two. They serve three potential purposes:
- Buying blueprints at the Anomaly -- most used
- Selling for large amounts of cash -- used to buy better ship / needed weird parts
- Refining into 15 Nanites each -- last resort
- Base power is crucial. You don't want to be out of power at night. So, the crucial tech bits are:
- Solar Power Cell -- do NOT use Biofuel Reactors -- they cost too much to power
- Battery
- Cuboid Room (costs 5 power) -- need Pure Ferrite
- Glass Cuboid Room (costs ZERO power) -- need Glass and Silver. Glass can be refined from Silicate Powder or Frostwort. The Frostwort is easier to collect.
- Normal Door -- you'll graduate to Holodoors later. (costs no power?)
- Storage Container (0 and 1, to start) (costs some power)
- Don't delete the base. Just tear down any old building costing power. Now build the base out using mostly Glass Cuboids. It looks cooler and doesn't require much power. Put a farm of solar cells outside to catch the sun. Connect the solar cell array to the base building. Put the batteries along one wall -- they should snap to the floor of the cuboid room (glass or not). I tend to put normal cuboid rooms every other room in the middle row, and then glass cuboid rooms between them. That row is between two rows of glass cuboid rooms. Yes, it requires a lot of glass, but the regular cuboid rooms provide some light on the inside. They also provide a nice solid roof above, where you can also put solar cells.
- I count 19 solar cells on the roof of my base.
- I count 18 batteries inside.
- The base uses 200kP -- and I have:
- 6 hydroponic trays growing Frostwort, for the glass
- 12 hydroponic trays growing Gravitino Balls (for the Nexus Mission previously) -- these are good "cash crops" and don't require exotic materials to plant. I may shift the trays to something different, if I don't abandon this base.
- 1 Food Processor -- storing a lot of things, but definitely Gamma Root, Faecium, and various Fruits. This allows me to go on "tame/feed creatures" Nexus missions, since I can fashion common baits from those three ingredients. I do a LOT of those missions, picking when to go based on what the reward is.
- 3 Landing Pads (I've since removed one)
- Teleporter
- 1 Large Refiner
- A Roamer Geobay outside, along with a Signal Booster and the Base Computer.
- The Solar Cells produce 500kP of power for 200kP of use. The excess 300kP recharges the batteries to 810000 stored kP, which is more than enough to last all night long.
- I'm going to abandon this base shortly though. The Survey Device in the MultiTool allows me to scan for Power Hotspots, Gas Hotspots, and Mineral Hotspots. You want this tech. In many (but not all) locations, you can find a triangle with one of each of these hotspots at the vertices. You want to site your base somewhere in the middle of this triangle, such that all three locations are less than 300u from all of the hotspots. I am for 275u just to be sure. There is no electrical hotspot near the base.
- The Power Hotspots use Electromagnetic Generators to produce energy for your base. Plant a whole bunch of them at the hotspot, making sure to wire them all together, then run the power line to your base. You may need to put a battery halfway in between (every 100u or so) so that the power lines can reach -- they are limited in length. (I also put a flag up there, so I can see it better.) This gives you a steady stream of power. I put one battery in a known place in the building -- by looking at the battery, I can check to see that I'm not running out of power.
- The Gas Hotspots use Gas Extractors to pull gas out. They need power, so do the Electromagnetic wiring trick. They also need pipes to connect them together. So, at the place where the battery is located, halfway along, I build a Supply Depot. Like electrical wires, pipes can only run so far. I like to build one more Supply Depot right next to a wall in my base, with a Holodoor in that wall, so I can access the Depot from inside.
- Mineral Hotspots use Mineral Extractors. They are loud, bounce, and make noise. It's best and easiest to connect them all up with power and pipes before you turn them on. I use the same Gas Depot tricks for Minerals, so there is a Holodoor to step next to for access to the mined mineral.
- There are tricks for extending the range of your base beyond 300u. I hadn't used any before this. However, when I discovered that there was a power hotspot roughly 511u away, I managed to stretch my range by adding a battery+flag combination roughly every 50u farther from the last one. So, I'm not abandoning the base after all.
- Talk to everyone -- let them teach you a word of their language. Hit language stones when you come across them. I invested in translator tech too, as an experiment. I got my first complete Gek sentence translation today. It makes a big difference when you have to make a choice based on an incomplete sentence. It doesn't matter what type of word you get. I just take the choice on the top of the list. There's only 700ish words in each language.
- When you build your farm, as you start the various base building missions, start by building a set of five or six standing planters next to each other. This is a great renewable source of easy carbon.
- When I create my farms, I usually build a great corridor loop, with biodomes on both sides of the corridor. Effectively, this is 2 x 5ish biodomes on the out run, and the same on the way back. If you put standing planters at each end, the starting planters may be renewed by the time you finish the loop.
- You will have to shoot at least one Pirate in the missions, to save a Freighter. Make sure you have some weapon tech on your ship, then zap the pirate. He's moderately easy, even for someone like me who really does not do well with those kinds of games. This will lead you to the Captain of a Freighter, who will offer it to you for free. Take it.
- Yes, I know there are ways to game this, through saves and restores, in order to get "the best" Freighter. Don't bother.
- This is a long game. You'll come across a better Freighter at some point -- there are almost always Freighters available to buy. My 1100+ Freighter is an A class ship, the second one for that game. Yes, I'd like more slots, but there are enough Tech Slots to put every Freighter Tech into them. It works for me and it's a cool ship.
- You don't need an amazing Freighter yet, because you need to find the Salvaged Freighter Modules (SFMs) that are going to buy Freighter tech. You need A LOT of SFMs.
- You're looking for 5 SFMs to start, so you can get the Teleport tech. That allows you to beam stuff to and from your Freighter from anywhere. Your Freighter has useful space. This will be a slog.
- The Freighter volume behind the bridge to the back of the big room is usable volume for building out a base on the Freighter. I find that the corridors and passages make it harder to create an easy, walkable deck with all your necessary rooms available. I generally clear out the volume.
- Build at least 5 Fleet Command Rooms, for when you send out missions. I build 7, because that's the largest number of missions I've ever had out concurrently. I put these on one long wall of the space.
- Build your Storage Tech out. I do this along the opposite long wall. Since these Storage Units are universally accessible from your Freighter and your Bases, they make a handy way to gather things from Frigate Missions and get them to your base.
- I also build:
- A save point.
- A Large Refiner
- A Nutrient Processor
- It is possible to build a Farm on the Freighter. I've never built a complete Farm because you have to harvest everything by hand. You don't get the magic Biodome "harvest everything" control. However, in my new start, I've been building a small Farm:
- There are four hydroponic trays for each of the things I know how to grow. (Recipes bought at the Anomaly with Salvaged Data.)
- There are 2 rows of 10 Standing Planters for Carbon.
- There is an art to recruiting Frigates, but if you follow a couple of simple rules, you won't go too far wrong:
- Most of the not-C class Frigates are too expensive and not very good for their cost. They have advantages outside their specialities, which makes them weaker for those missions. I tend to stay away from them.
- Frigates will gain experience and improve their class as they go along.
- You have 30 slots for Frigates, and 5 types of Frigates. I aim to find 4 of each to start with, because there will always be one kind that's harder to find. Last time, I could not find an Explorer at all. This time, I already have three in my four ship Fleet. My goal is to eventually end up with 6 of each type of Frigate.
- You can afford to be picky here. You don't need to hire the first ones you find.
- Some ships have red disadvantages. While they will eventually be removed, and then replaced with an advantage, there's little reason to take one of these ships.
- Every ship starts out with a +15 advantage in their focus. You want them to focus on this, but that doesn't always happen.
- Every ship starts out with a small number in each of the other stats, or "-", which is zero. Ships that have all non-zero numbers are preferred. Ships that have numbers beyond 1 and 2 can add help on missions not of their speciality.
- A ship with another advantage beyond the +15 need to be looked at carefully. You want Support Frigates to have varied skills. You want other Frigates to be more specialized. So, having a +3 Trade bonus advantage on an Explorer may kick its Trade number up, but that's one advantage that can't be another Explorer bonus.
- I recruited three ships to start -- two Explorers and one Industrial, because those were in my home system and you have to start somewhere. They formed a 2 star fleet for Exploration and Industrial missions, although they were very weak in the latter.
- If you send this Fleet out on a Balanced, Combat or Trade mission, it will probably not have much success. It won't bring you back much, and your ships may get damaged.
- If you send this Fleet out on a 1 star Exploration or Industrial mission, it will succeed, without damage.
- If you send this Fleet out on a 2 star Exploration or Industrial mission, it may succeed without damage. It might fail, and you might have to recall one or more ships for repair. You repair them by landing on them and walking through the interiors of the ship. Very cool -- worth a look.
- There is probably a mission your small Fleet can do for the day. Send them out. They bring back stuff -- money and goods. They may bring back Salvaged Freighter Modules, which is how you improve your Freighter tech. They can bring back other useful things that can be combined into something worth a lot more, if you know the recipe. My first mission came back with almost $100k, which was great!
- Having the Teleport capability means that you can beam Di-hydrogen and Tritium up to the Freighter. I just buy a lot of Di-hydrogen Jellies and refine them into Di-hydrogen on the Freighter. Note that your Refiner cannot see Di-Hydrogen Jellies in Freighter slots. This is a bug. You have to move them from the Freighter slots into your Exosuit or Starship in order to grab them for the Refiner.
- Read the Frigate Mission reports. Many of them will be repeated frequently. Some of them are little gems, placed there with loving care. Vy'keen Death Cult indeed!
There's a lot more, but this should give you some ideas of what I did when I started a fresh game. Hopefully, it helps and informs you. submitted by /u/vortexofchaos [link] [comments] |
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