A rogue-like survival mode does sound interesting. I never enjoyed crafting/ wide open make your base type games, but a dangerous loop in a space world that wants to kill me might work. And I’ve really been tempted to give it a go in VR on the PC. Will the rogue-like mode still be a game mode after the event? Does anyone know how NMS currently performs in VR (I think when I last asked it had problems).
The roguelike stuff will be limited to the new Expedition. I get the impression that it’s an experiment, so if things go well perhaps they’ll find a more permanent place for it down the road.
As for VR, I see plenty of positive reports about it on the discord, but there are also issues and limitations.
I don’t think it will ever not have problems, unless they switch to OpenXR. Native Steam headsets probably work better until then.
That said, I wouldn’t play it any other way, even if it does struggle to keep consistent framerates. Lower the settings, lower the res, lower the refresh rate, all help to make it a more solid experience.
Implementation is good, especially for a ‘tacked-on’ VR mode. Control-wise, dogfighting kind of sucks due to the virtual sticks, but everything else is great.
There are a few specific features that just don’t work/aren’t supported, too, such as traveling through the Centre. I forget what the other ones are, unfortunately.
Correct, that’s a long-standing issue and you have to switch to flat screen to do it. Traveling through the centre is a pretty rare thing though, at least for me.
PlayStation (5) VR2 Announcement trailer:
Also, I jumped into the new expedition, and jumped out a few minutes later. Most of the milestones I earned between reaching the ship and reaching the Anomaly made no sense to me, and the backstory ended up feeling too on the nose given that all the different ways of playing I’ve tried in the past year or so have already felt like being in a loop.
This can’t run well on a Switch can it?
Weren’t there pretty big performance improvements in the first year or so? I don’t think you could hit 60fps on the last gen at release but eventually that was possible (maybe just on PS4 Pro/Xbone X).
The Switch sounds a little crazy, but I can imagine a graphically scaled down version flirting with 30fps and someone deciding that’s good enough.
The 20th free update:
introducing a complete overhaul of freighters and fleets
Nice! I’ve been hoping they would make the freighters more interesting.
Not that interesting to me really. In the early game my freighter was a good source of income but I’ve long surpassed that. Afterwards it was useful only for the ability to summon my exocraft anywhere.
Apparently it’s now possible to teleport directly to your freighter which changes things a bit, I guess.
Can you use the freighter as a primary base? I think I’d like that more, just hopping from system to system and exploring the planets. I always get burned out having to build a base (especially in survival, where basically no planet is perfectly hospitable) because I feel like it keeps pulling me back there with quests when I’d rather just keep moving around.
The only real limitation you have with freighter bases is that you will need a planetary outpost for your exocraft geobays.
Yeah that’s been viable for a long time actually, but now that you can teleport to it it’ll be even more viable. You’ll want to upgrade the engines so it can jump to the different star types though.
True but you only need to build them once, literally anywhere, then you can forget about them. Just build the orbital materialiser on the freighter and they’ll go with you everywhere.
Yeah, I’m aware. :)
Freighters can also jump pretty far which makes them useful for exploration. With all upgrades, a freighter can jump well over 3000 ly.
Incredible.
It’s crazy how much they’ve added to this game over the years for free.
As per usual with an update like that I have reinstalled NMS. Have the tutorials been updated? So much has been added, geez. I want a nice big ass freighter as my main base and build a base for ground vehicles close to a town where I am major. And have pet. Anything I need to keep in mind for that?
Those are areas HG really wants you to delve into fairly early on, and both the freighter and a settlement will come to you even if you don’t want them. (First warp-in freighter rescue call after the first few warps, first settlement distress call after 10 iirc.) You do have a degree of control over style, though, and if you follow certain steps can pick from a variety of freighter models/sizes or settlement biomes/systems, if you want to do that.
If you want tips about tailoring that stuff to your particular tastes, just ask and I can share more detail. Otherwise, don’t sweat it (it’s mostly cosmetic stuff anyway) and it will come to you in no time.
As to things to look out for as a new player in general, my main recommendation is to just make sure you unlock the Anomaly before veering far off the beaten path.