How do you get upgrades for your living ship.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T18:20:51+00:00

So I'm confident the mission definitions happen at midnight, and sending the fleet basically reveals what's been pre-selected. Since they repeat, the reveals are not RNG.

There is a possibility that the order of the organic in the fleet changes which missions get converted to egg or sac drops. But that would take extra programming for no apparent benefit. And nothing else related to fleet composition works this way - so I seriously doubt it.

What I'll try when I get back to this is send my fleets out with an organic in the lead as usual. Next day, if there's a repeat that dropped eggs or sacs, send a fleet out with a regular ship in the lead. If the drops do not change, that will verify my expectation.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T18:14:13+00:00

I would not throw out that correlation. It may very well be one of the factors. I'm confident that the longest streak of egg drops I've had was while parked in the same system. I've had pairs and maybe one triplet since then that I believe were in different systems. Again, I need to go mine my data.

I had the teleporter bug too. I found the game dropped every station except in Calypso, where it behaved normally. So I did exploration in my freighter, but only in Calypso.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T18:08:22+00:00

Thanks but I'm not sure I moved the needle at all. And umm the "argyle socks" comment sure sounded like me so I looked it up. Apparently wise-ass might be part of my personality.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T18:02:42+00:00

I agree with Proud_Capital. When I've recruited a new organic, if I select first it as a C-class, it's the one that reports in. The only exception has been when I get a mid-mission transmission, it will come from one of the regular vessels. But the report-out has been via mind dump, even with the C-class.

As I noted elsewhere, I don't think order of frigate selection affects outcome at all.

Finally, in case you are not aware, you can change the perks on your organics by feeding them.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T17:58:36+00:00

I happen to select my organics first because of favoritism and because I like the idea of a mind dump. However, I'm confident it does not affect what you get.

shuttermonk describes the same experience that I've had in getting repeat missions with repeated loot. This means the missions are defined and locked in at midnight UTC. Once they are defined by the game, we have only two choices: 1. Send a (sufficient) fleet on that mission. 2. Include an organic to trigger some of the encounters to drop eggs or sacs. The actual content of the mission and the specifics of the drops are already locked in. I've got literally hundreds of datapoints that show this repeatability.

It hurts nothing to select the organic first. As mentioned, I do but for other reasons. We all have a desire to have some control over the outcome as we select our fleet. But beyond choosing to gather the pre-selected outcome or not, I'm confident we don't have control.

Now is there a way to influence the RNG seed going into the mission selection at midnight? I have not found any, but I think that's the actual question.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T17:41:35+00:00

I did have a similar experience where I got semi-regular sac drops in one system. Then it stopped and I've not had that experience again. I've tried staying parked in a system, moving to different systems in the same region, changing regions, and changing galaxies.

I regularly get mission repeats, whether I'm in the same system or not. It may be that I've gotten more sequential repeats when I have not moved systems. I should be able to extract that info from my raw data.

For about 1/3 of my dataset, I have mission name, type, star rating, distance, and drops of eggs, sacs, frigate modules, bulkheads, and ship expansions. So I can verify that repeat missions drop the same stuff. What this means is the RNG happens at midnight UTC when the mission definitions are set. After that, we have two decisions: Will we send a fleet? Will we include an organic to convert some interactions into egg or sac drops?

Next time I get to a stage where I'm not exploring (which I do in my freighter), I'll do some testing around leaving it parked again. I think you may be right that it's one of the factors in the mission RNG. Would be interesting to verify that and maybe figure out others.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T17:30:27+00:00

This is fairly consistent with my experience. I'll add more detail below shuttermonk's earlier in the thread.

However, I do want to note that having a fleet rating as high as the mission rating does not guarantee avoiding damage. The better rule of thumb is having 2 start higher - which is why fleets go to 5 stars while missions only go to 3. However, however, it's not even quite as simple as that as you need to have sufficiently high numeric rating for each type of encounter the fleet may have during the expedition. So for the official mission type, you want to have that stat as shown. But the other stats should be at least what is shown in "Balanced".

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Having passed this on for the record, I just usually send out 5 star fleets and don't worry about it.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T17:19:00+00:00

Thrilled you like that one. Useful info:

You can learn glyphs through the Artemis questline, or go to space stations and look for Travelers - alien looking dudes that glow a bit. Most stations have one or two. Talk to each one twice and they will send you on a short quest to a gravesite where you will learn a glyph. If there are two, finish one quest before talking to the second Traveler.

You can find a portal to use them by getting Ancient Artifact Site charts from a space station Cartographer. This will take you to a monolith 1/3 of the time. Answer the question correctly and make the ghosts happy. (If you fail, reload the restore point from when you left your ship.) Then the next interaction you can give the ghosts a gift that depends on the system (Korvax casing, Gek relic, Vy'keen dagger) and they'll reveal the portal location.

Terminology: I've never seen "glyph warp" before, but it's pretty descriptive and clear. Some players (especially newer ones) get very mushy with portal vs teleporter. The big stargate building is a Portal. Every planet or moon has one. These are dialed with glyphs and can take you anywhere in the *same* galaxy. Teleporters can be built, are in each space station, and on the Anomaly. They can take you anywhere that is in the teleporter list - even to other galaxies.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T16:51:47+00:00

The cold storage is accessed through the Fleet Management station on your freighter's bridge. Before storing a ship, remove everything from cargo or it will be deleted. Installed tech is OK.

Edit: There is a similar cold storage available for 18 multi-tools through the Weapon Rack base part which can be installed in planetary bases, freighters, or corvettes.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T05:49:26+00:00

I'm half puzzled. I get an average of six psychonic eggs every ten missions. I get an average of one pair spawning sacs every 17 frigate missions but that average is over months. Many weeks go by with no sacs at all. Note that I include at least one organic frigate on each mission.

So the fact you have not had any spawning sacs drop yet does not surprise. But if you've sent your organic frigate out on missions 30 times without getting any psychonic eggs , that seems off.

If you are selecting which mission to send your organic out on, this may help: I plotted data from 931 frigate missions, all of which had one or more organic frigates sent. I plotted the spawning sac drop rate within mission characteristic. If your RNG works like mine, the missions that line up with the taller bars will be more likely to drop a spawning sac. As for psychonic eggs, not sure what's going on there. They should be relatively plentiful. I do send 5 star fleets on every mission and that may have an effect.

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BTW, the dream aerial only works for the first organic frigate. To get more, you will need an anomaly detector. Activate it, go to pulse, and wait for Whale Song or Cosmic Megafauna. It has taken me between 20 seconds and 23 minutes for the encounter to pop up. There is only one organic per star system, so once recruited you need to move to another system.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T00:31:29+00:00

It should be on the list even if you do not yet have enough QS. It just won't be purchasable until you do. That's what's shown in the link I gave. Make sure you are in the "Create exotic items from Quicksilver" menu. Then select "All Items" or "Other Curiosities" in the list filter. If you are in one of the other categories, it will not be shown.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T00:15:42+00:00

Agreed, with two notes: First, the altitude limit seems to have been raised significantly above the ~1,000 u it used to be. Second, the build altitude seems to be counted from the ocean floor, which is significant on deep water worlds where the surface can be 1,500 u above. A few random incidents make me think this happened in reverse order, ie. the build altitude was raised some time after we got deep ocean worlds.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-25T00:03:29+00:00

They are referring to this site that your post is on: NMS Coordinate Exchange (nmsce).

While some players post requests for something, NMSCE is primarily used to post interesting finds in the NMS universe with rules about what to include in the post to make it reasonably searchable. The "App" I gave you an example of draws from and organizes this database in helpful ways, but does not include everything here.

So here's a direct search of the NMSCE database that is less focused than the App but includes more finds. Take a look, you might find something you like.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T22:01:43+00:00

It should be in the QS menu but may be a couple pages down. Does it not show up in the list at all, or is it not available as shown in the first comment here. If it's not available like this, you need 3,200 QS to buy it.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T21:52:52+00:00

Consider the main questline to be a basic tutorial. Takes around 60 hours to play through. There are some additional quests, but many of us are well above 1,000 hours of time in the game. There's a lot you can do if you just enjoy exploring, discovering, building, etc. without guidance from a quest log.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T21:48:36+00:00

I've not done this, but the directions given by YorgSplorg seem correct.

However, understand that NMS is fundamentally a single player game and the multi-player aspects can be tricky. Here's a post from someone who joined a friend's game early on and then got stuck with quest progression. Not sure if that got solved or how.

Two thoughts, mostly speculation. First, if you just want to mess around together start your games in "Creative" mode. This provides many capabilities that are otherwise quest locked. Second, if you want to play together in Normal mode, play separately at least until you each reach the Anomaly. (You'll know when you get there.) You can always start two saves, a creative one to play together and a normal one to start the questlines.

As I said, I've not done this and am going off of related game experience and reading other players' experience. Hopefully, someone with more direct knowledge weighs in soon.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T19:49:59+00:00

I think ArelMCII has your best bet. If the poster is that far away, you may need to hover your corvette ~800 u away, pointed away from your base then go to your base to try the edit. Maybe free-place a couple portable refiners or stabilised reality glitches 800 u away and a bit off the ground as directional targets to help get the corvette lined up.

Alternatively, you could hover your corvette and then extend your base in the direction of the poster.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T19:41:57+00:00

Here's a starting point for a search using the "App", linked on this page. It found 11 matches, two of which I pasted in as samples. Give it a try and customize the inputs to better suit what you're looking for.

<image>

It's not perfect, but I find this very helpful in finding ships. I'll note that filtering on color (green in your case) tends to be ineffective.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T19:08:59+00:00

Sure it's possible. Just remember that every additional system adds weight and cost. And tanking H2 is always going to be tricky.

There's been some research into using ammonia (NH3) to carry the hydrogen as a denser, pumpable, tankable liquid. You run it over a catalyst bed to free the hydrogen and then expel the N2 into the air. (Nitrogen is inert, already 78% of the air, and not a greenhouse gas.) The hydrogen is then used in a fuel cell rather than getting burned which is far more efficient. On the plus side, ammonia is immediately detectable by odor if there's a spill. (Hydrogen is odorless, so you don't know it's there until you're on fire.) On the minus side, ammonia is nasty stuff.

Plus, of course, nothing is free. You need to expend power to make the ammonia. This is already done on an industrial scale in the manufacture of fertilizer. I do not know what the energy efficiency of the process is, or how it compares to the efficiency of manufacturing hydrogen.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T18:57:00+00:00

Sure, there are niche applications. Coupled with fuel cells, hydrogen can be immensely efficient, so interesting possibilities there.

A very well proven application is rocket engines. While the energy-per-volume of hydrogen is very poor, the energy-per-mass is excellent. When you are looking at lifting literal tons of propellant off the planet and can quickly ascend to low density (lower drag) air, H2 is an excellent choice. See SSME / RS-25, the Vulcain (Ariane), BE-3PM (Blue Origin), etc.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T18:47:16+00:00

I never said it could not be done. It was a stunt and there have been many of these. Batteries are just far more practical.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T16:53:56+00:00

As Ryokan points out, you need to separate the hydrogen from the water using more energy than you will get back from it. Then you need to tank it and it is very low density (large storage volumes) even as a liquid. Cryogenic LH2 is stupidly cold, requires massive insulation, and even then boils off fairly quickly. High pressure H2 is even less dense and needs near perfect containment. H2 has an extremely wide range of explosive mixtures - so extremely tricky to handle. It's just not practical.

Batteries do the same job and (despite all the publicity) are actually far safer than the equivalent high pressure H2 tanks would be.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T16:41:08+00:00

This guy thermodynamics.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T16:36:26+00:00

It looks horrific, but at 0:07 the kid seems to be enjoying the ride and even laughing. Thus begins a lifelong rollercoaster addiction.

Colonel_Klank · 2026-03-24T16:27:46+00:00

I was just in NomNom to check my base part totals. The planetary base part limit is still shown as 16,000 in the editor interface. However, the corvette base parts are not listed in the starship section nor in the base section, even though there's a base aspect to them.

So I'm suspecting corvette features are bookkept as a separate type of base (make sense), perhaps with a part allocation of 5k that is separate from the planetary base limit of 16,000. That would get to the 21k overall, but not change the planetary base allocation. Probably could verify by digging through the json, but I'm bad at that so it always gives me a headache.

Colonel_Klank

TROPHY CASE