Hi all! Just wanted some info on some things i'm not sure about:

1. When i come across crashed ships and it has the option to 'add to collection' or 'swap', without having to 'fix' all the broken slots is there a way to get it to the space station to turn in for scrap? and if i add it to my collection and fix up everything, am i able to swap my ships at random or do you need a place to store them?

2. Why do some planets have flags at the save points and others don't?

3. I really suck at pirate combat, is there a way to 'lock-on' to the target so i'm not just spinning circles and hoping i hit them?

4. what are the freighters used for- is it extra storage?

Sorry if these questions sound dumb, i've never made it this far before. Appreciate the help!

1 (and a partial answer to 4). One bit of the sufficiently advanced technology that's indistinguishable from magic in NMS is that your idle ships are automagically docked on your freighter. You can't be looking at the idle ship for this to happen, though, so you can't summon the freighter overhead and have the idle ship disappear up to the freighter. (a) Claim the crashed ship and add it to your collection. (b) Go back to your other ship and fly into space. (c) Summon your freighter and land on it. (*) The new, crashed ship will be docked in the hanger bay. (d) Enter the crashed ship to make it your primary. (e) Exit and walk up to the freighter's main deck and teleport (**) to any space station. The still damaged crashed ship will be there when you teleport in. (f) Scrap the crashed ship and collect the goodies.

2. A side effect of the procedural generation?

3. For mouse+keyboard flight try both tethered and locked modes. Some like one, some the other. As you add upgrades to the pulse engine the ship's maneuverabilty will improve. Also, ship type matters. Haulers have better shields than fighters but they're still sluggish. Another possibility is to use an Xbox controller (an X360 USB controller works and they're cheap) or a regular USB joystick along with x360ce.

4. A home away from home. You can build large bases on a freighter for storage and also for farming. Freighters can launch frigate task forces that bring back units and valuables. Add a Matter Beam to the freighter's tech slots and from anywhere you can access the freighter's main storage as well as the contents of any storage units installed on the freighter. Add a teleporter and go to any base or space station on your teleport list (one way, from the freighter only). Install an "Orbital Exocraft Materializer" and summon your primary exocraft to any planet when the freighter is in the system. Freighters can have pretty good warp distance, better than some ships. Install the three stellar class upgrades (red, green, blue) to the freighter and you can use if for your main travels, which frees up some tech slots in your other ships (they won't need the color warp upgrades).

(*) The magic happens when the freighter is summoned. If it's already moored in the system then it has to be summoned even a short distance.
(**) Prerequisite is to have crafted a teleport station on the freighter. You can not teleport to the freighter.

thankyou so much for taking the time to answer so in depth- it's very much appreciated and informative!

1. I do this, and AFAIK everybody does this:

- Select "Add to collection"
- The new, disfunctional ship is now your current ship. Enter your previous ship to make that ship your current ship again.
- Change to an outpost in a different star system than the current one
- Call the new ship. That will only work if you are no longer in the current star system. The new ship is now your current ship, and it will be magically partially repaired so it can actually start and land.
- Teleport to any space station and deconstruct the ship for a small amount of valueable loot. Much less than usual for this kind of ship, but if its a hauler, it can still be quite a lot.

Alternatively, you probably can use the Space Anomaly ? Never tried that, but you can go to any other star system and call the Space Anomaly, enter it, and switch your current star ship on the landing pad. The later only works in the Space Anomaly. Afterwards you can again use the teleporter of the Space Anomaly to go to any Space Station for deconstruct the ship there.

Repairing a ship you found is ridiculously expensive in resources required and not worth it at all. I would maybe consider it if it was an exotic with amazing stats, but thats astronomically unlikely.



2. I dont understand the question, sorry. What is a "flag" ? I only know flags as decorative objects without any function. As such I pay no attention to them.



3. No. Combat in NMS is usually riddiculously easy, unless we talk about the higher sentinels, especially the walkers.

Pirates specifically are fought by simply flying backwards. This allows you to maneuver very quickly and to continue hammering them. Using that technique, even the unupgraded starter ship makes short work of any pirate.

Upgraded ships are only worse. A fully upgraded Positron Ejector oneshots any pirate ship.

General rule of thumb, I would always get the "shotgun" type of weapon, for both your star ship and your multi-tool. Thats because even if you dont strike true, you still can do some damage, and their damage is riddiculously high to begin with, compared to other weapons. Thats worth the reduced range, easily.

The shotgun type of weapon for the multi-tool is the Scatter Blaster. If you dont play Permadeath, you can consider also getting the plasma launcher for your multi-tool. However you also want the personal forcefield on that weapon, otherwise you might keep killing yourself with the right mouse button.

For Permadeath: AVOID. You always end up killing yourself with the plasma launcher (or the geology cannon, which is pretty much the same thing) sooner or later, because the damn thing bounces.



4. Freighters are a complex object with many functions and associated quests.

You can only own one freighter at a time, so if you buy a second one, you lose the first one.

Unfortunately freighters are a binary question. Either you have an s-grade or you have a crappy one. There is no third option.

Because only s-grade freighters can be fully upgraded to 48 general slots and 21 tech slots, which is what everbody of course wants. They also have the best warp range.



You can get freighters either by simply landing on them in any system and buying them directly from the captain, or through a freighter battle. You really want the later option, especially since if you get the freighter through a freigther battle for the first time, its free. Also, there are two types of freigthers you cannot get but through freighter battle.

You trigger a freigther battle by playing for at least three hours and warping for the fifth time after that point. You will immediately see if a freighter battle has triggered because you will be surrounded by freighters when you leave warp.

First time this happends you will get offered a regular, small freighter, with less initial inventory. It makes no real difference though, if they're s-grade they too can have 48+21 slots once you've upgraded them. There are many more variants of this kind of ship than of the next one.

Second time and every time thereafter the freighter battle triggers, you will be offered an advanced, "capital" freighter. Those start at 34+9 if s-grade. There are only two types: Star Wars Star Destroyer lookalike, or Warhammer style. They each also come in three size variants, and different colors. The kind of freighter that you get offered in a system is always the same - same type, same size variant, same color. Also of course the NPCs inside the ship will always be of the dominant race of that star system.



For getting a s-grade freighter, you will want to go to a system with a three star economy. If indeed a freigther battle is triggered once you enter you ignore the battle for the moment and immediately search for the space station. Land on the station, leave the star ship so it creates an automatic save, reenter the star ship and leave the station again.

Now you can do the battle. Especially if you use a ship weapon that has an area of effect, such as the Positron Ejector, you may damage the good guys and will have to reload, so be careful about that.

Once you're done with the bad guys, without destroying any good guy, the captain of the freighter will contact you and give you a waypoint to the freigther. Land on the freighter and immediately after leaving the star ship, check the class of the freighter. For some reason you will NOT get a new auomatic save at this point, despite the fact you usually do when leaving your star ship.

If its S class, you're golden. If not, reload your automatic save and repeat the battle.

The chance for S grade is reportedly 2% in three star economies, 1% in two star economies, and nonexistent in one star economies. So having an economy scanner is really important when selecting new star systems if you want to farm a s-grade freigther.



After that you'll get a whole lot of other things to do to get a fully upgraded freigther which is helpful in so many ways (ability to warp much further, ability to warp with friends, special missions etc etc etc).

Ugh.

I do NOT AT ALL recomment freighters for farming.

1. Farming makes annoying sounds all the time, every time a plant changes its graphic representation. With a large farm, this is a LOT of sounds. Thats why you always want your farm separated from the rest of the base with a short range teleporter.

2. Farming is done much better with large prefabs. Use a round or square room and put a biodome on top of it, which then also needs a ladder so its accessible. Now you can plant 16 plants of your choosing in that biodome. More importantly, once they are grown, you can farm them ALL with a SINGLE click simply by looking upwards into the room (switch to first person to make this MUCH easier to do) and clicking on the monitors. All this is unavailable on a freighter.

The only advantage that a freigther for farming has is that you dont need to bother with any energy. But I take that over having an unnecessary clickorgy any day, plus annoying sounds all the time. For a small amount of farming, such as for the gardening questline, the freigther is OK.

My own farms are always the same layout: 20 biodomes for producing the materials for 16 Circuit Boards, 8 Living Glas and 8 Liquid Explosives. That requires 20 clicks total - compared to about 300 that I would need with any other method. A fully upgrade s-grade freighter can break over 6000 ly. Even an x-grade maxed explorer cannot reach that.

Plus in multiplayer you can warp with friends.

Wow, that alot of info! Thankyou so much, obviously there's heaps I don;t yet know about. Actually I'm still in the Artemis quest where I need to go to a comms tower for the call, but the tower is in a galaxy which requires an emeril drive. I don't have emeril so I can't craft the drive and no one I've come across sells it. How can I create a functioning ED?

Sorry I got distracted and started doing other stuff than playing NMS.

In the now very unlikely event you havent solved this problem yet, or for anybody else who reads this thread and wants the answer:


My quick method for getting an Emeril Drive is getting the first glyph from any traveller (sooner or later a space station will have one, but you can also find them at outposts or you can stumble on an Unknown Grave by sheer luck as well) and then finding a portal and dial an all first glyph address.


Getting the address of an unknown grave from a Traveller is done by speaking to him once, which can result in all kinds of effects and dialogues, for example the traveller as one of the most possible positive outcomes he might give you a multi-tool "back", and then speaking to him again for a second time and spending 100 nantites to get the location of the travellers grave in this system. Visiting this grave will give you one glyph, and its always the next one, so the first time you get the first glyph.


Finding the portal on a planet can be done two ways, ignoring the third option which would be finding the portal by sheer luck, which is also possible but quite unlikely, and ignoring the last option which is dialing the address of the planet from any other portal in the same galaxy once you would have all 16 glyphs and would have located some other portal already.

Those later two options however are the only options available if the system in question has no dominant race and thus no monoliths.

Anyway, the first option is to get the alien structure seeker items from the Geographer in any populated space station, I think they are called charts (you have to either gamble with 15 nanites, which gives you a random pick of the four types of charts, or buy directly through Navigation Data, which allows you to buy the correct alien structure one that you need directly) and use them until they give you a monolith. They also find various other alien structures which arent Monoliths though, so you might have luck or might need a lot of these. Usually 10 of these charts should suffice.

Or, as a far better option, you might get an exocraft with a fully upgraded exocraft signal booster and use it to look up a monolith. This might fail if there is none close by, so you might need to fly a good distance with your starship, land again and retry.

Once you found a monolith, you have to solve its riddle correctly. You can do so easily by saving (obviously also shut off multiplayer) and reloading if you fail.

Once you have solved the monoliths riddle, you can talk to it again. You need the corresponding item for the system. This is either a Gek Relic, a Vy'keen Dagger, or a Korvax Casing. Note that Gek Relic and Korvax Casings are the item to also raise Gek and Korvax Faction when talking to a Gek or Korvax, respectively, while the item to raise Vy'keen faction is actually not the Dagger, but the Effigy. Gek Nips and Korvax Convergence Cubes are only very rarely needed.

In case you dont have the matching item for the system, you can trade for them at trading outposts and archive towers. The reliable way to locate a trading outpost is to use the function of the economy scanner that you hopefully have installed in your star ship. The other option (which is not easy) is to try to follow the trade routes that are visible in the system, because at their ends would be the trading outposts (I'm not sure if thats always the case, either way its a PITA because if you get close to the planet the trade routes are no longer visible and even before they are hard to see).



Anyway, once you have found the portal, assuming you have the first glyph as well, you can activate the portal and dial an all first glyph address.

You'll need a couple materials for activating the portal. I typically use Copper (or Activated Copper or Cadmium/Emeril/Indium which you wont currently have yet), Hydrogen (or Cobalt etc), Condensed Carbon (or Oxygen or Carbon), and Sodium Nitrate (or Sodium etc). If you lack any of these, you'll have to get that first.

Once the portal is activated you can dial the first glyph repeatedly, i.e. twelve times, until you have a full address.

This will send you randomly to one of eight options, which are all either Cadmium (red star), Emeril (green star) and Indium (blue star) planets. You can then just repeat dialing this all first glyph address over and over, until you have seen all three options at least once. Every time you reach a new type, you get at least one of that element. You dont really need more than just one, see below.



Once you have at least one of each, you can expand Cadmium, Emeril and Indium (and by the way also Copper) by combining them in a medium (or large) refiner with Chromatic Metal.

That means you put an amount N of the element and the same amount of Chromatic Metal and get 2*N of the element.

Now Copper refines to Chromatic Metal by 2:1 (or 1:0.5), Cadmium by 1:1, Emeril by 2:3 (or 1:1.5) and Indium by 1:2.

This means once you have one Emeril or one Indium, you can have unlimited amounts of Chromatic Metal through refining alone. Indium being much more efficient than Emeril, it goes like this:

1. N Indium + N Chromatic Metal -> 2*N Indium (save N Indium) (this process is relatively slow)

2. Refine N Indium -> N Indium, 2*N Chromatic Metal (save N Chromatic Metal) (this process is quite fast)

3. Repeat #1 (save N Indium): 2*N Indium, N Chromatic Metal

4. Repeat #2: N Indium, 3*N Chromatic Metal

5. Repeat #1; you now have 2*N Indium, 2*N Chromatic Metal ! Twice of both the original amounts !

Repeating this over and over, and using up to five refiners you can have per base (3 medium and 2 large), possibly even spreading over multiple bases each with another five refiners, in the end you will swim in heaps of Indium and Chromatic Metal, and with combining them with Chromatic Metal can easily also get a big stack of the other three elements if you have at least one of each of them to kickstart the process.

Once you have a sufficient reserve of Copper, Cadmium, Emeril and Indium, any task that demands any of these materials (they arent needed often, but all of them appear in some recipes) can be done immediately with no problem.



P.s.: Oh I forgot: I always get the Indium drive because with that you can get to any star system. The Indium drive needs 250 Emeril. I just buy the recipe from the Space Anomaly because any other method would take a long time.