No Man's Sky I - 18,446,744,073,709,551,616

[SuperPanda]

Regarding Sentinels: When the "blue eye" icon is on they'll come and scan you, if you hold still they'll normally turn and leave (does not work on frenzied or aggressive sentinel planets).

I had a first tonight while playing. I was surveying an icy world (-90c is warm with also extreme night colds and freezing storms) and actually saw a predator bring down an herbivore. I'd seen predators hanging out near them, but usually crab spiders and those always think "hmm, I feel like traveler for dinner today." While treking back to my ship I noticed a lone herbivore away from its herd and saw a predator stalk it and kill it.

[Wookieetank]

There are a couple of things I really don't like, though. One is how difficult it is to scan flying creatures. My poisonous fungal planet that I've been exploring has these little flying batlike things that I must have seen several hundred of by now, but I can't scan them because they're so small and fly high in the air. I've tried standing on high ground or on top of giant mushroom trees and jetpacking up toward them, but I can't get a read on them to scan. I've also fired multiple clips' worth of my pulse gun at them, trying to shoot one down so I can scan the body, with no luck.

If you're on the PS4, you can zoom in twice in scan mode by clicking the right thumb stick. Not sure what the control would be on the computer. It's not perfect for tracking flying things, (ground scanning them after introducing them to your laser is sooo much easier), but it can help sometimes. If you're lucky. And/or the critter is large and slow flying. Really if I find a planet has flying critters I don't bother scanning any of them most times.

[Silfir]

People should stop quoting this number to imply that it's improbable that you'll find a "discovered" planet. "18 quintillion planets" is how many planets are in the entire game universe. All players start in the same galaxy. A lot of players have read what going to the center does, and most decide that they rather simply explore around them. So yes, if the game doesn't flop and sells well for a while, and the starting galaxy doesn't change, there will be a time where there will be very few planets to actually "discover", at least within the first galaxy.

Also, "discover" is such a bs term in the game. You don't discover these systems, nor planets. Even those that lack any life have some structures left behind. The Gek, Vy'Keen and Korvax are already there, flying about, or standing in a structure, alone and waiting. You discover nothing.

If you suggest that the game will ever reach a stage in which there are "very few" systems left unexplored, even in a defined area such as the outer ring of the universe, I'm not you sure you have an understanding of how large a number "18 quintillion" actually is.

It's not improbable that you'll find a discovered planet from time to time, anyway. Just that there'll be so many you'll feel there's no point to exploring.

Your second point is the actual killer. It's almost like the developers heard people complain that "there will be nothing to do", and took that to mean they ought to make sure every planet was positively packed with "things to do" instead of making the exploration-focused scenery porn game they had actually set out to make.

It's also possible that they tried to make the quasi-exploration-only No Man's Sky with usually empty planets and scattered alien presence and found at some point that it wasn't very fun, either. I don't get the impression they ever really knew what game they wanted to make from a mechanical standpoint, which is why features were touted during interviews and promotion and later abandoned or cut.

[Velaryon]

Regarding Sentinels: When the "blue eye" icon is on they'll come and scan you, if you hold still they'll normally turn and leave (does not work on frenzied or aggressive sentinel planets).

Right, but what bothers me is that it takes practically nothing at all for them to come over and get up in your face to scan you. Oh no, this guy burned up two trees for carbon! Better watch him like a hawk for ten seconds so he has to stop what he's doing and wait for us to go away! It's too much, and I think it should take quite a bit more before the sentinels get on you for gathering resources, which is like 90% of what you do in the game.

If you're on the PS4, you can zoom in twice in scan mode by clicking the right thumb stick. Not sure what the control would be on the computer. It's not perfect for tracking flying things, (ground scanning them after introducing them to your laser is sooo much easier), but it can help sometimes. If you're lucky. And/or the critter is large and slow flying. Really if I find a planet has flying critters I don't bother scanning any of them most times.

I know about the zoom, but it doesn't help in this case. There's another flying species on my planet, kind of slow-flying giant worms, and I was able to get those either through zoom or through standing on high ground (maybe both, I don't remember). But for smaller life forms it's still not enough. I've tried and tried to get these bat things. I've literally climbed up on the highest available thing to stand on, zoomed in twice, and then jetpacked up toward them to the limit of my ability while trying to scan them, and it doesn't even begin to work.

The zoom needs to be better, like 5x better than it is, for scanning aerial life forms.

[Lord Fullbladder, Master of Goblins]

The mining laser is the best bet for shooting down flyers. Zoom in while firing, and you can see little puffs of smoke whenever they register the damage. They've got fairly generous hit boxes. You might have to run after them a few times, but the hardest part I've had was finding the body, but sometimes the Sentinels will be helpful enough to come over and angrily scan it. I've had a couple planets with two to four aerial species (and one with butterflies).

(You can use the analysis scanner zoom and fire at the same time)

[Sliver]

If you suggest that the game will ever reach a stage in which there are "very few" systems left unexplored, even in a defined area such as the outer ring of the universe, I'm not you sure you have an understanding of how large a number "18 quintillion" actually is.

I would doubt that anyone really has a solid understanding of how big of a number that is. But again, that's the size of the universe, not the galaxy. I have opened the galaxy map and zoomed in towards the center. It takes about 15 minutes to do that. I know the galaxy is big, but it's not the entire universe, and we don't know how many galaxies are there. Someone is on their 11th galaxy...

So while that number is incredibly large and mostly pointless, it's not the actual number for what people are talking about when they discuss the potential for not encountering anything undiscovered for a while...

[factotum]

I know the galaxy is big, but it's not the entire universe, and we don't know how many galaxies are there. Someone is on their 11th galaxy...

I've seen a post on Reddit suggesting there are 256 galaxies--however, the same post also calculated that there could only be 2^56 (about 72 quadrillion) planets if their estimates were correct, so either Hello Games are lying about that too or there's another factor in the planet generation that the post didn't find.

[snowblizz]

I've seen a post on Reddit suggesting there are 256 galaxies--however, the same post also calculated that there could only be 2^56 (about 72 quadrillion) planets if their estimates were correct, so either Hello Games are lying about that too or there's another factor in the planet generation that the post didn't find.

Clearly the number in the post advertised is 2^64 ie as many numbers a 64-bit system can have in memory. I don't know anything about supposed estimates, but the idea is clearly that somehow that matters.

[Ogremindes]

Goddammit, game.

I started a new save today, just 'cause. Anyway, on my starting world I got the co-ords of a Transmission Tower, a fair ways away from where I was, which, as it does, gave me the location of a crash site, excited to get my first new ship I head over and find...


my starting location



EDIT: OMG it;s possible to perfectly land on an outpost landing pad. I didn't think it could be done.

[Wookieetank]

EDIT: OMG it;s possible to perfectly land on an outpost landing pad. I didn't think it could be done.

The landing pads have a surprisingly large hitbox for autolanding on them. Best part of landing pads is that you don't use any fuel to take off from them.

[Velaryon]

I gave up trying to scan the stupid little flying bat things and moved on to another planet. This one is a barren wasteland with a radioactive atmosphere (which functionally seems to be no different than a toxic atmosphere, as it still just constantly drains my environmental protection but I'm fine as long as I keep recharging it).

The new planet I have named Clyde. And I've also named every rock and every plant (there are no animals) Clyde. Every Clyde on Clyde has already been cataloged and uploaded, and I've gotten my trophy for 100% exploration of a planet.

Unfortunately, Clyde is boring because there's hardly any life on it, so it's time for me to move on again.

[Eldan]

The mod scene is really starting to take off now. IT's very nice. Favourites so far:

Fast Actions (actions happen in a click, instead of click and hold for a few seconds)
Low Flight (you can fly as low as you want over terrain, and even through canyons)
Deep Space (removes most nebulae, space looks black now in most places)
Less Buildings (much fewer buildings on planets, feels more like exploration, now.)

[Eldonauran]

The mod scene is really starting to take off now. IT's very nice. Favourites so far:

Fast Actions (actions happen in a click, instead of click and hold for a few seconds)
Low Flight (you can fly as low as you want over terrain, and even through canyons)
Deep Space (removes most nebulae, space looks black now in most places)
Less Buildings (much fewer buildings on planets, feels more like exploration, now.)

Mods!?!? Gimme!

[Eldan]

http://nomansskymods.com/
http://www.nexusmods.com/nomanssky

All very easy to install, so far. Just a zip file to be extracted into the right folder.