Thanks! Wow, lots of information!!

Meanwhile, partly based on the things you guys said, I abandoned my 12 hours' worth of gameplay and started afresh.

This time, I did things a little differently - I accepted the broken ship you find right at the start. Yes, it was a mess, but I just repaired the necessary items to make my way to the nearest station. There, I waited around two hours (1) until a B class ship came around with 21 slots and slightly better specs than the broken one. One GREAT feature about that ship: I have taken off about 10 times now and never needed launch fuel yet! Yay! Big win right there!

There's also that guy on the new (Beyond) Anomaly, who has nice upgrades

Sorry to hear that. Me has lots of fun with all the stuff. Nobody demolished my bases. I saw really cool stuff (also from steam-players whose bases you can visit, too. I'm collecting 'oldtimers'. I like to discover a planet on creature's back from time to time. I saw the center and the fade etc. pp. I don't need pressure to have fun :)

look for some Mods.

Even since first release, NMS can be made so much 'better' by a good choice of mods, to the point now where i would not even consider playing the default game as that can be too frustrating/confusing/illogical/broken.

Mods (as with most games you can mod) just give you the option to get a 'better' NMS expereince.

Having said that not all mods work with the latest version of the game, so you have to be paitent or find the mod maker for a particular mod and ask if they are updating it etc. So it is not 'perfect', but you can certainly reduce many of the frustrations with the game via mods.

Thanks for all the suggestions, I really appreciate it :)

I have one question: when I started afresh with the game, this time I opted to claim the broken ship. It is B class with good specs, except the damage potential is 0. I didn't mind - I was going to swap it with another ship anyway in one of the stations.

However, I'm now finding out that NO ship - EVER - offers more than damage potential 1. Even ships I can't afford yet, such as S class... it seems like they all offer basically the same specs as what I have now, never more deviation than 1. Is there a way to get a ship with higher specs than that or am I basically screwed?

As always, thanks!

The Damage Potential shown for a Star Ship depends on the active Weapon (plus eventual Upgrade Modules), which usually is the Photon Canon. Eventual Star Ship class bonuses are then added to that Damage Potential value.

If that weapon is broken, you can't do any damage and thus have no Damage Potential :)

Checking on other ships (ships' ? ship's ? Saxon genitive to the rescue ?) Damage Potential, while yours is zero will allways show a Damage Potential of '1' on the other ship. That's ... well, you guessed it, a bug ...

But this one is rather easily fixed by dropping a handful of Pure Ferrite and Sodium Nitrate onto your defective Photon Canon.

Edit: Typos

Yay, that was it! I started to hunt for a better ship, but decided to save a little more money first so I can go for an A class model with more slots. At least I can now go for a ship with good specs, thanks!

Now that I'm a more "seasoned" (cough) player, some more observations.

- I really resent the rigid NPC responses. It's great that I can fast forward them, but wow, after 300 times hearing how much Helios misses his physical body Each! And! Every! Time! I'm getting sick and tired of talking to him for a measly 50 nanites. Ok I get it, time means less to you than it does to me, but could you please sound a little less SENILE? Same goes for characters you want to ask to trade with, translate a word for you, initiate frigate missions, etc. It really breaks the immersion and it shouldn't be difficult to have them vary a little - or, you know, say nothing after the 3rd time.

- Is it me, or is the space map a convoluted mess? I have just about finished the Artemis quests and gotten to the point where I'm told to "make my way to the center of the galaxy". Sure, fine, but it isn't at all clear how to actually get there. Do you keep jumping from the furthest point you have reached and having to keep notes where that is? Or is there an easier way to keep track?

- Related, so far I'm not seeing many benefits of traveling further and further. The space stations remain EXACTLY the same, the 3 galactic species don't change, the planets don't vary as you make your way "in". I was very excited to get to a "red sun" system, only to find out it was exactly the same as the "yellow" systems. What's the point?

- Related to THAT, the planets really don't change much, do they? I mean I understand that certain materials have to be readily found on each one so you won't find yourself stuck anyway, but oh boy. On EVERY planet I see those "puffer" plants, venus fly traps, ferns and bulby trees. The only thing different is the name, when you scan them. Same with landscapes, after about 5 "ahs and ohs", they start to repeat themselves from planet to planet. Same with the environment: hot, cold, toxic and radioactive, and the lucky "just right" one to build a base on.

- As a result, you can recognize a mile away which plant will give you oxygen, or carbon, or which minerals will give you ferrite dust or di-hydrogen. I would have liked it better if we were "forced" to scan the surroundings in order to find which plant/mineral offers the wanted material rather than just look around and mindlessly start mining the stuff you need. It would make much better use of the visor and scanner we all received on our first landing planet and make life a little more interesting at the same time.

- Lore: following the missions I have been visiting ancient ruins, crashed freighters, and other abandoned places on occasion. It would be much more fun if they actually added to the story, rather than a generic "your knowledge of the fill-in-the-blanks has been increased".

- Freighter: I'm really enjoying the missions! But as for the freighter itself, what's the point of having this GIGANTIC beast in space and it only has 32 slots? I have been experimenting a little with creating rooms and corridors, which is fun, but it's also mostly pointless since it doesn't give you more slots to store stuff. I mean I put in a large refiner and a few other items, but all that fits easily in the one holding area behind the bridge. I really wish there was a better use for freighters!

Don't get me wrong, I'm really enjoying the game, but what I would enjoy much more would be a sense of progress. As you travel from planet to planet, see NEW wonders after a while. Or more variety, such as you have to dig your way to an entire underground city for a change. Heck I'd settle for a surface city with stores and people and traffic and libraries - HECK I'd settle for a live village with a few tents and a farmer's market every now and then!

Now that most of my grievances are aired, I must say this thread has been very helpful in getting some of my former gripes out of the way. It's true, with improved technology and freighter missions, money pours in easily. In fact just the other day I walked through the Anomaly and some stranger suddenly gave me 5 items (forgot what they were, something to do with longevity). It turned out they were worth $70,000,000 - and it turned out that 30 minutes later I bumped into a very nice A class hauler ship with 48+8 slots. Thanks to you, anonymous benefactor, I am now the happy owner of that ship!

Oh and I meant to say I'm really enjoying the roamer! I wish I could take it with me to all planets... it makes traveling places so much more convenient.

You can place storage units in the freighter and it keeps your spare ships out of the rain. Handy when you need a little of this or that; just call in the freighter for those oddball bits that aren't part of your everyday carry.

Once you get a combat frigate or two, call in the freighter when you see a pirate scan begin. The combat frigates will launch fighters to engage with the pirates.

The frigate missions can return with useful craft items like cryo pumps, iridisite and so on.

And there's a separate mission board on the console near the Navigator.

Base building. I don't do much building on freighters so there are probably gotchas that I'm not current on, but there's room to build out massive farms to craft the high value items like stasis devices.

If you have the relative mission selected, you should get way points and lines on the galaxy map leading the way.
The filters are useful too, especially if you want to find race specific starships and linger (reload multiple times) around a Trade center until an S Class of the starship design you want shows up. I just got an S Class Heavy Fighter from a Vykeen yesterday with 38+12 slots, good damage and range .. Took me about 34 reloads of the same autosave to get it. But finding all Vykeen Opulent / Wealthy systems would have been a pain without those filters for Lifeforms.

I think HG are trying to keep the whole thing family friendly too - I think its a PEGI 7 rating if you buy it in a PS4 box off the shelf - So it has to be not so complicated / adult for all players down to that age group ..
.. But even then, I agree it needs work. It may be a procedural generation technical issue that limits HG with these things, or it may be simply they haven't enough lifetime / development time / economical time to implement everything NMS fans want. But I remember the original Elite back in the 80's which had two simple mechanisms that kept me going for about five years (well, 3D vector graphics in a space game in those days was so new that was also a big draw for me). 1. The achievement of getting to Elite status took years. And 2. Along the way there were special missions, the first took a long time to trigger, the second was double the time of the first, the third was double the time of the second .. Play time to do all 4 missions was quite a long time. We have missions and achievements in NMS, but they dont take long enough to get them all done imho. I would like some to be hinted at at some point in the future, which don't occur until way after reaching the Centre

I don't like being shackled to a planet base, so once all the planet base missions are done, I make specialist terminals onboard the Freighter, then click it and your planet bound vendor (Farmer / Armourer / Scientist etc) will come onboard.
Now you can use a lot of the space to farm whatever, and your base becomes the Freighter to "Go where no one has gone before" ..
.. But even then, I agree this also needs work.

Precisely. Carrying the Exxocraft in some way on the Freighter, to be beamed down to any planet you are exploring / want to have a bit of driving fun on would be good. I want the Freighter to be more like Star Trek Voyager, and keep on exploring :)

The game needs more long term pull, after you reach the centre and .. best not spoiler it .. There still needs to be more to tweak your curiosity and fuel the need to explore. Its a lot less samey than it was 3 years ago, but its still not feeding the explorer which is what the game is all about.

My biggest wish is to improve longevity with hints of things to come, carrot on a stick which takes years of playing to get there, improving the hook to keep exploring.
And for Hellogames to once and for all squish all the long term bugs and stop expanding the features which just generate new bugs (and resurrect some old ones which have been previously squished in updates to older major overhauls). I think though that old bugs coming back is due to the nature of the game engine and procedural generation.

I still keep playing it though, dont quite understand why, its remarkable in that playing it is relaxing like no other game has ever achieved for me.

The map could be better, yes. As for making your way to the center, you don't actually have to warp closer to the center. You can warp to the edge or do a loop if you want. All the game is concerned with is whether you warp to another system or not. Just warping to other systems will fulfill the objective of that part of the quest.
You can. Just have the mats to build the geobay in your inventory, build it on whatever planet you're on, then tear it down once you drive the roamer off it. You can call it to you wherever you are on that planet, no matter if the geobay exists or not. Just do that for each planet you land on.

I remember these feelings one day but I'm still ingame almost every day. I'd propose to build a base where you are (if you want to return to this place one day) and learn travelling by portals. Take a break from following the (sometimes boring) line.

If you play via galaxy I'd recommand to visit some stuff from other players. There's incredible stuff out there. Try all the small other things to do in NMS. Build a activated indium mine to get a billionaire. Or find your favorite planet and set up a chocolatecake imperium based on your own spacefarm. Try Johntodd's Airless Racetrack in GoGinized Space with your pimped exocraft ... ;-)

One time you will hear the call of universe and set out again for discoveries.

As always, thanks so much for the additional advice and tips :) Lots to learn still, that much is obvious!

There's something I like to do out of curiosity. It's completely painless and requires no resources other than a functioning ship:

I enter the anomaly, and activate the Terminus. And then I wait, until interesting base names pop up, and jump to them. Since the game automatically saved, when I exited my ship on the Anomaly, I can simply reload at any time, and be back on the Anomaly, no matter what :)

Nice ^_^

FWIW apparently I am two jumps away from facing something big... I can't wait. After that, I'll probably venture into multiplayer more (not tried it at all yet) and visiting other galaxies/more planets/go sightseeing/get my hands on exciting new ships.

On that note, I saw the cutest little exotic today but decided not to get it, since all the specs were very basic and it only had 15 slots. But some day... some day!