After months without a single word, Hello Games broke their silence over the weekend to announce the Foundation Update for No Man’s Sky. The Foundation Update is now live on the Playstation Network and PC and it’s turned out to be a significantly larger update than originally expected. As announced, it contains the foundations of the new base building system, but also holds a whole lot more.

Front and centre of the Foundation Update is the new base building mechanic for No Man’s Sky, something I stated the game should have launched with in my review. You’re able to claim empty bases you find on planets, thus making it your home planet. You can then create modular structures to build up your outpost over time and hire aliens to help research new technologies. Farming, engineering, weapon and science specialists are hireable at space stations, and you can also teleport back to your base from there. If you decide you want to move home planets, its a simple process of dismantling your base and refunding all of your spent resources.

While at your base, you can now also farm biome dependent crops outside, or inside your base or freighter using hydroponics. You’ll be able to harvest these crops over time to keep a steady stream of resources and you can even discover ten new plant types and new resources by hiring a farming specialist.

Yes, you did in fact read that other part right, you can now buy your very own freighter in No Man’s Sky. At great expense, you can now purchase your own massive freighter and then summon them from anywhere within the galaxy. You’ll be able to teleport resources to your freighter, similar to how you already could with your ship, giving you another place to stock up on plutonium. When you’re in base-building you can also customise the inside of your freighter, including increasing your cargo holds.

Throughout all of this new content you can now play the game in one of three different game modes. You’re already used to Normal Mode, which is the vanilla No Man’s Sky experience, but now you also have the option of playing the game in Creative and Survival Modes. Creative Mode is similar to the same mode in Minecraft, with players being able to explore the universe without limits. The one draw back with Creative Mode is that trophies are completely disabled when playing in it. Survival Modes take the opposite approach, making planets more toxic, enemies more deadly and making the game more difficult as a whole.

Overall, these features are just the largest new additions to No Man’s Sky, with new biomes, more varied plants, new motion blur and anti-aliasing methods and so much more included in the absolutely massive full patch notes below. While No Man’s Sky still hasn’t hit the highs promised before release, this update is certainly a step in the right direction.

[toggle_box title=”No Man’s Sky Foundation Update Patch Notes” width=”Width of toggle box”]

• General Gameplay
  • Fixed technology becoming instantly fully charged when repaired
  • Fixed ship appearing on incorrect pad in space station after loading
  • Added interactable objects that required certain tech to collect
  • Added shootable objects that require certain tech to mine
  • Rebalanced resource availability and technology charge requirements
  • Fixed initial game flow – where travelling to space too quickly after visiting the monolith could prevent the first atlas station notification appearing
  • Prevented player being prompted to scan for buildings before leaving the system after visiting the monolith
  • Prevented laser and melee attacks while in space from attempting to edit terrain
  • Improved calculation of resources received when mining terrain
  • Renamed Signal Scanners to Signal Boosters
  • Signal booster objects updated to search for playable bases, suit upgrade pods, and mineable resources
  • Removed signal booster from being distributed on terrain, as player can now build them
  • Improved accuracy of environment detection, fixing cases where it rained inside caves
  • Fixed galactic waypoints not loading correctly across saves
  • Removed atlas pass v1 requirement from doors in stations
  • Suit upgrade pods are no longer spawned in stations
  • Suit upgrade pods can now only be used once
  • Fixed collision in anomaly that was causing issues when exiting larger ships
  • Increased the number of different NPC character models generated per system
  • Fixed the game always remaining in day time for players who began their save prior to patch 1.03
  • Fixed a potential crash in foliage instance renderer
• Localisation
  • Fixed stats page in asian languages
  • Fixed multiple issues with asian language formatting
  • Multiple improvements and fixes to localisation text in all languages
• UI
  • Added new icons for specific types of primary resources
  • Fixed health bars not appearing on some targets
  • Added hazard and life support drain indicators
  • Fixed mission messages not appearing in a timely fashion
  • Beacons now notify the player that they will save the game
  • Fixed crash when creature IK animations were updated under certain conditions on the discovery screen
  • Improved navigation in discovery UI
  • Massive speed improvements to browsing huge discovery lists
  • Increased size of discovery storage
  • Added option to load “Earliest” previous save in Options menu
  • Fixed weapon naming
  • Added icon to remind players of the reload button when weapon is empty
  • Multiple fixes for viewing discoveries
• PS4
  • Added photo mode
  • Large optimisations to the engine to accommodate base building
• PC
  • Added support for up to 8 mouse buttons
  • Fixed better order position history for mouse smoothing
  • Fixed bug where setting gamma to zero gave a fully bright rather than fully dark image
  • Fixed hard-limiting on save sizes, with appropriate warning about free space on boot
  • Player is now notified when shaders are being loaded
  • Fixed occasional crash on exit
  • Fixed performance of trail renderer for some AMD cards
  • Large optimisations to the engine to accommodate base building
• Generation
  • Added biome specific plants
  • Adopted new method of distributing resource plants on terrain, for more lifelike clumps of plants
  • Improved distribution of plant life across all terrain types
  • Introduced visual differentiation of red, green and blue star systems
  • Introduced new mineable terrain resources found only in red, green and blue star systems
  • Reduced average building frequency
  • Introduced planets with elevated building density
  • Introduced planets with no buildings or sentient life
  • Increased the proportion of lush and tropical planets
  • Decreased the proportion of lifeless planets
  • Fixed bug where multiple ships could appear, overlapping, at the player’s start scene
  • Prevented certain building types being incorrectly placed underwater
  • Prevented multiple buildings occasionally being placed in overlapping positions
  • Prevented buildings occasionally being placed intersecting with the terrain
  • Improved and altered per-planet terrain resource generation, improving gameplay and visuals
• Creatures
  • Fixed elevation cache mismatches, causing errors in creature knowledge and pathing
  • Fixed slow memory leak in creature role allocation
  • Improved creature animation speeds
  • Fixed issues where some creatures turns had the incorrect frame count
  • Fixed occasional crash when interacting with creatures
• Atmospherics
  • Increased proportion of vibrant blue skies
  • Corrected cloud levels for clear skies
  • Improved average cloud level settings
  • Fixed cloud rendering while flying in your ship
  • Improved atmosphere depth when transitioning to space
  • Increased fidelity of atmosphere rendering on nearest planet
  • Improved atmospheric fog as you fly to a planet
  • Improved fog method for planets seen on the horizon
• Terrain
  • Improved terrain generation algorithms
  • Improved and extended blend areas between different terrain noise types
  • Terrains now generate more open spaces
  • Smaller features now appear at nearer lods to improve visuals in the distance
  • Fixed objects being placed on incorrect terrain material types
  • Improved resolution of distant planet terrain
  • Decreased differences between planet as seen from space and actual planet terrain
  • Fixed seams on planets when seen from space
  • Improvements to terrain material selection and terrain material blending
  • Terrain generation priority and cost calculation improvements
  • Fixed terrain generation angle calculations, which would previously prevent nearest region being generated first
  • We now generate caves on lower terrain lods to decrease visual differences in lower detail terrain
  • Introduced more varied and vibrant colouring to terrain for each biome
  • Decreased frequency of brown terrain colour selections
  • Changed texture scales to improve transition between terrain lods
  • Improved terrain colour combinations to add variety and better match terrain contouring
  • Improved terrain texture blending method to better retain vibrant colours
  • Improved settings for hue, saturation and value noise variation on terrain
  • Fixed a number of issues causing holes to be seen in the planet terrain
  • Fixed occasional crash when mining terrain
• Visuals
  • Fixed colour of muzzle flashes on player weapons
  • Added muzzle flashes to ship weapons
  • Added cockpit lighting for damage and weapon firing
  • Added debris to freighter explosion effect
  • Improved freighter cargo explosions
  • Improved photon cannon hit and space explosion effects
  • Improved turret explosion effect
  • Improved grass colour selection
  • Improved grass colouring method to match underlying terrain colour
  • Improved grass placement to match gradient of terrain, and rocky terrain slope patches
  • Improved lighting on grass
  • Improved alpha cutoffs and blending for grass in the distance
  • Improved colouring method for on-planet buildings
  • Fixed “pop” in lighting when flying between planets
  • Fixed incorrect lighting seen in shadow areas
  • Improved lighting method when rendering tree leaves
  • Fixed procedural texturing on objects with multiple overlapping textures
  • Fixed size of certain texture atlas normal maps
  • Fixed texture scaling on asteroids
  • Zinc plant is now more obvious when it has been gathered
  • Fixed occasional rendering errors due to precision on cockpit during warp
  • Fixed pulse lines not appearing when pulse driving out from planet atmosphere
  • Fixed shadowing artefacts on imposters
• Space
  • Improved asteroids to allow much denser fields
  • Improved explosion effects
  • Fixed scale of moons on the space map
  • Added freighter groups to the space map
  • Changed distribution of resources in asteroids
  • AI ships will now clear asteroids in their path
  • Planets are now scannable from space to see their resources
• Space Combat
  • Fixed bounty targets warping out too soon
  • Improved HUD indicators in space combat
  • Added damaged ship effect on AI starships
  • Added formation flying
  • Improved locking on passive starships
  • Improved AI combat flight patterns
  • Added new ship weapon technology
  • Holding brake whilst turning now activates drift for fast turns
  • Improved AI ship freighter attacking
  • Improved freighter targeting code when under attack by enemy ships
• Freighters
  • Fixed pulse drive to prevent travel through freighters
  • Improved docking code
  • Added hangar to the lead freighter
  • Added docking in freighters
  • Added icon to accessible freighter hangars
  • Added colouring to cargo drops to identify what is in them
  • You can now only pick up cargo drops that will fit in your inventory
  • Added auxiliary freight ships to freighter groups
  • Added alert lights and alarm audio for when freighters are in combat
  • Improved turret lights and explosions
  • Improved muzzle flashes on freighter turrets
  • Added indicator of cargo contents
  • Freighter Commanders now give rewards for rescuing them from pirate attack
  • Fixed collision on freighter cargo containers
• Audio
  • Updated the lush ambience to make the wind sounds less noisy
  • Ambient background fauna now checks for the presence of creatures
  • Added rain on foliage
  • Added rain on ship
  • Added freighter specific footsteps
  • When on a dead planet, no music will play
  • Round table prop now plays an appropriate sound
  • Added more music to the loading sequence and game start
  • Added audio to new base building props
  • Created sounds for new base building props
  • Added audio to freighter doors and internal freighter ambiences
  • Added freighter explosions
  • Added freighter alarm
  • Added ambient radio comms when approaching a freighter
  • Fixed missing sounds when in a space station due to the mix settings
  • Multi-tool upgrades now affect audio
  • Lots of minor mix changes
  • Changed some compression settings for PS4 audio to make the sub-channel audio play more reliably

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