Beacon Update Review – Disappointing But Settlements Are Slightly Improved

NMS Worlds
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settlement
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Every building in my settlement is fully upgraded to “S” class, even all the tiny “1x1” buildings. I do have an Autophage settlement but it is not fully upgraded, so I’m not certain if an Autophage settlement has any benefits over a normal settlement. The main benefit I have found is that if your settlement is “S” class, you can have your settlement produce frigate fuel. If you send your fleet on expeditions from your freighter, you will find this beneficial depending on how often you send fleets on expeditions. Frigate fuel needs tritium and di-hydrogen, you cannot set up a resource farm for these two elements. Whenever you need tritium, you have to gather it. Whenever you need di-hydrogen, you have to gather it. However, the frigate fuel production rate of a settlement is rather slow. If you send only one fleet out on an expedition once a week, then this functionality will be great. If you send multiple fleets out every day, then this functionality will just be an annoyance.

Here is my settlement and all the benefits I have found:

1x Overseer’s Office - Select the products your settlement can produce
1x Settlement Tower - Gain 1 “Navigation Data” once per day, scan for planetary buildings “A” class, scan for space anomalies “S” class
3x Starship Landing Pad - Ship upgrade capabilities, ship salvage capabilities
1x Saloon (pub, bar, tavern) - ByteBeat Device, food processor
2x Trade Hubs (marketplace) - Trade terminal, guild envoy, technology merchant
1x Industrial Plant - Sells multi-tool
1x Fishing Pond - Allows you to fish at your settlement

3x Agricultural Hydroponic Tray Buildings - Can’t seem to actually use the hydroponic trays
6x Small Buildings
5x Medium Buildings
4x Large Buildings

My biggest disappointment is the utilization of the “Saloon” or tavern. In the fantasy genre, the tavern is essentially a place for gossip, clues, and quests. Since it’s a tavern, NPCs can come and go. A new NPC you’ve never seen before can show up later in the game and then disappear once you’ve completed a quest for the NPC. Our settlement is a starport with ships coming and going. So why can’t new NPCs show up at the tavern every now and then and give procedural quests? The tavern should also have a bartender that’s always there and sells nothing but drinks. Since the tavern has a ByteBeat device, Hello Games needs to implement a ByteBeat repository of player created songs. People have done Michael Jackson’s Billie Jean and A-ha’s Take On Me in ByteBeat (search YouTube for No Man’s Sky ByteBeat tracks) and I wouldn’t mind having access to them. Of course you can actually play the real songs in the background while you’re gaming. But having them in-game would just be a certain level of coolness.

I’m aware people will place a base computer at the edge of a settlement to allow themselves a certain level of customization. I’ve done this and I ended up ruining a really awesome settlement I had. The settlement layout was perfect and I had turned one of the large buildings into a “base of operations”. This base of operations was more for role-playing rather than for in-game functionality, but it was an aspect I enjoyed. I placed a biodome in the settlement grounds and then later deleted it. This left a “terrain” crater where the biodome was and the terrain can’t be restored with a terrain manipulator. Settlements should have more built-in customization options.

The fishing pond is an elevated tank of water. It should have been a “surface level natural pond surrounded by flora”. This was a good opportunity to improve a settlement’s aesthestic look, hopefully Hello Games will change this in the future. Here is an immediate suggestion that shouldn’t be hard to implement from a programming standpoint. The class of a building is now displayed above it. If a building is “B” class, you will see a letter “B” above the building. Allow us to toggle this off or on via the Overseer’s terminal.

There has to be a feature that will make you want to go to your settlement everyday, and at this moment, no such thing exists. This is what I was hoping would get implemented, but it’s not the case. Maybe Hello Games could randomize the ships that land in your settlement, or randomize the multi-tool being sold and increase the probability of alien multi-tools. Will Hello Games revamp settlements again some time in the future? I’m certain they will. And, as always, I look forward to the next update.

EDIT: I just discovered this. You can select 2 products that your settlement can make. You can make both products the same thing. So I’ve opted to select frigate fuel for both of my settlement products. And if you have the maximum allowable number of settlements, which is 4, I’m guessing you can make all of them produce frigate fuel. I think this is pretty decent if you like sending your fleets out for expeditions. For the frigate fuel alone, I think it is worth it to upgrade 4 settlements to “S” class.

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The fishing pond should be a hot tub.

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All good points & you never know… maybe HG have more planned for the in-settlement interactions.

As for Frigate Fuel makings, my chosen method is to buy Dyhydrogen Jelly in bulk whenever I see it & pick up Tritium in pirate systems (& any other opportunity) & then refine & make my Frigate Fuel.
I offset this expense by trading in contraband from pirate systems to regular systems.
There is still a profit to be made & it’s less grindy than harvesting from the wild.

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It’s perhaps interesting to consider the wider goals this update is intended to address - and how far it’s been possible to achieve them.

The whole procedural structure of No Man’s Sky is based on the concept that locations don’t exist until you visit them. This allows the game to make the most efficient use of available resources - only data relating to the player’s current situation is loaded into memory and/or processed.

The settlements change that. They have a life beyond the player’s immediate actions, and continue that life even when the player is absent.

It appears HG have hit the buffers in terms of how far these independent subroutines can be allowed to interact with the rest of the game. If the settlements were made any more realistic, if they had any more independence, if they were any larger, then the main game would suffer computer resource shortages.

The thing is, they’re obviously trying to expand the concept - they’re trying to push the boundaries.

This, I think, is another of Hello Games’ experiments. I think they’re trying to understand how LNF could support independent, self-acting (possibly AI?) NPC communities.

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If you visit these worlds, you can copy the songs to your bytebeat library, then you can make a playlist out of them on the saloon jukebox. It’s not a ready made repository but it’s the next best thing.

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I just discovered this. You can select 2 products that your settlement can make. You can make both products the same thing. So I’ve opted to select frigate fuel for both of my settlement products. And if you have the maximum allowable number of settlements, which is 4, I’m guessing you can make all of them produce frigate fuel. I think this is pretty decent if you like sending your fleets out for expeditions. For the frigate fuel alone, I think it is worth it to upgrade 4 settlements to “S” class.

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I’ve yet to play since this update, but I have heard the fish caught in the settlement pond to match class? Curious if it also affects the auto trap results?

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There is a Reddit sub-Reddit that has ship coordinates, multi-tool coordinates, etc. I haven’t checked yet if there is one for bytebeat tracks. Regardless I did a YouTube search and found this guy’s channel:

He creates bytebeat tracks and his channel is completely dedicated to showcasing all of his tracks. He has made over 200 bytebeat tracks and coordinates for all of them. He also has an instructional video on how to add his tracks to your bytebeat library. It seems that he makes all of these tiny bytebeat bases that house only 1 song, it’s basically 1 base for 1 song. So this guy has like over 200 small bases scattered throughout all the planets he’s explored. He is definitely a music lover and the genres he covers are extremely diverse.

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I haven’t attempting any fishing at the settlement fishing pond yet, so I’m not sure if there is any correlation.

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Artisan does awesome work on the Byte Beat.
I have been following them on X for a while.

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My bytebeat collection is 98% from Iteration Artisan. The other two percent are my own bad attempts :slight_smile:

Artisan, using a bug, managed to make one that makes generative polyrhythms, it breaks when you try copy it to your own collection, so it can’t be replicated, but I love visiting the site (one of the first places I saved the space station location to favourites when the feature was added)

Re: fishing

I made my Autophage settlement be on a waterless planet and named it “soontherewillbefish”. When the pool gets built I’ll rename it to “nowtherearefish”.

Still waiting on the request but looking forward to testing it’s behaviour out. Especially on a planet that would have had zero possibilities for fishing without it :slight_smile: I wonder if I just opened myself up to a slew of future bugs :face_with_peeking_eye:

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