I had four reasonably nice ships. A 22 slot class S, a 48 slot class A Hauler, a 38 slot class A Explorer, and a 47 slot class B Hauler.
I fought a space battle, and had the opportunity to buy a bigger Freighter, which I did. I transferred the contents of my old freighter over to the new one, but my ships didn’t make the switch.
I was left with only the ship I had fought the battle in. The other three had disappeared.
I thought the freighter might reset if I left, so I flew down to the nearest planet, and came back. No good - the ships were still gone.
By now I was down to only my earliest save to recover the situation, so I used it, I went back to a time before the space battle, and my ships were back.
So it seems to be something to be aware, and careful of.
What chance? You don’t have to create any saves to call your freighter to a different spot…that’s what causes the ships to switch NOT you leaving and returning. So no you hadn’t lost your ships, you just couldn’t be bothered to call the freighter in a different spot and then got scared because of paranoia.
The same thing happened to me when I bought freighters three times. The first time I freaked out too. Didn’t want to take any chances so I reset to an earlier save. The second time I had a couple of save points, so I took a chance, dropped to Mode Select screen and reloaded and my ships were there. Just make sure you have a previous save to spare and you’ll be safe.
I had a similar but different disaster happen. I came upon a trading post that an Exotic ship appeared at out of the blue. It was a great example and I had skipped two others which had too few slots available, so I jumped at the chance so I bought it. Well, I evidently had the blessing of Emily that day because they kept appearing! I bought them all because I was rich enough with the discounts. I went back to my Freighter and swapped out my A and S Class Fighter, Explorer and Hauler one at a time, swapped ships - thank God trading posts have seven pads! - and brought the Exotics back one by one to the Freighter. I changed my mind on the last one, one of those blue editions with the one tall blade, because I dearly loved my fighter. We’d been through a lot and I’m a sentimental slob. I was snapping pics of my Hauler because it was a fine example itself, bumped into my Fighter before I reclaimed it, and off it went drifting. In my horror I dropped to Mode Select but remembered that if you do, any unclamed ships vanish. But I knew of no way I could have saved it anyhow, so I moped back to my Freighter with the Exotic, and am using it now as I hunt for another example of my lost fighter.
Hem… when you buy a freighter there is a save, when you land, another one. So in your folder you have:
S1: landing to see if your ships are back
S2: buy freighter
S3 good save.
If when recall the freighter the ships are not back it’s over since to know it you must land and then your S3 is not here anymore. So it’s natural to be nervous when you try this solution.
Yea, I can imagine that being a bit spooky to do indeed. That being said, it’s a known issue and as old as the freighters themselves. When you buy a new freighter, it won’t have your ships, they’ll automatically re-appear after you re-summon the freighter.
Though I suppose you might file it as a bug report to HG, it’s an old bug, but it does still need to go someday I suppose.
He could always close the game for two minutes, make a back-up of his saves, and reload, call the freighter etc…it’s not that hard. You can just copy the saves to the cloud or to a USB.
I do not even own a Freighter yet, but it is good to know these little quirks of the game. I can totally understand being afraid to lose the ships you gathered over time. @Polyphemus, You are most likely not the only one to run into this and decide not to risk it. Sure we can create copies of our saves and whatnot to reduce such risks, but this should not happen in the first place. I would consider this a bug that needs fixing, no matter how long it has been around. Just a notification would suffice for that matter; “Recall the new freighter to make any previously docked ships available again”. I am however sure there are better solutions to this.
I had an insight into freighter issues when I was attacked by pirates…
They blew up some pods which didn’t repair until I summoned the ship elsewhere.
I’d never had a second ship when I upgraded my freighter but the feature doesnt surprise me.
Not really a bug, more of a reset feature IMO.
And as for the one that wasn’t so helpful - the thing is, it’s all very well if you know what’s happening, and you know what the solution is. But you have to know it’s going to work. It was the first time it’s happened to me.
For all I knew, if I’d left the system and called my freighter, I might have lost that, too. And then people would be calling me foolish for not knowing that the correct answer was to put my foot in a bowl of custard, or something equally unlikely.
Really good to know this in advance. Thanks for starting the topic @Polyphemus. Forewarned is four-armed as they say and four-armed is awesome because you can use two multi-tools simultaneously whilst also stirring the custard.
I wasn’t very comfortable myself.
to aid immersion for those times when I land on a marshy planet 
I play NMS barefooted with various environmental additions: sandpaper, icecubes etc.