Just had the exact same terrifying thing happen to me. I also noticed I could summon Freighter, build and summon Exocraft, but not summon my Ship while on the random planet I used a Portal Rune stabby guess to get to. Also also, I only got “First Contact” after driving in Exocraft some distance and exiting.
Upon returning my alternate ship from Freighter was parked where I’d left my main ship, I realised I hadnt had a saving notification until then and immediately panic stabbed ALT+F4, and upon returning was thankfully placed pre Rune Portal. Woot!
To the poor sod who originally posted this, I recommend using mods to “cheat” your way back to your previous state, specifically the zero cost mod (can build anything without needing resources). Or easier use Cheat Engine to edit your stuff back to how you remember it, you can then remove the mod and continue in Vanilla.
I can confirm that the vanishing portal bug still happens. A Spacing Guild member’s save file was ruined because he went through a portal and there was no portal on the other side.
He tried saving with a device and then loading the save to make the portal appear, but that didn’t work, then he got killed to see if that would fix it, but this created an “auto-save” so then both of his saves were after he was trapped with no portal.
He even tried going to a monolith and locating a portal, it sent him to one on the planet, but the portal was non-responsive and could not be used.
So his save file was ruined because he was trapped on a planet with no ship. He then left the Spacing Guild and we haven’t heard from him since. He may have even quit playing the game. A very sad story indeed which resulted from this awful bug.
I ran into the portal bug the other day… I was just testing out random glyphs to see where it would take me. Then I ended up under one of those snaking ground archways with no portal anywhere. I decided to just reload my last save right away because I was worried about being stuck.
Thing is, I’ve saved after portaling before without thinking twice about it. And if I did it that time I would be screwed. Hope this is completely fixed in NEXT.
I have made long journeys on the ‘other side’ and had to save and quit then continue later. As long as I save with a beacon BEFORE going through and no more than 1 time after portaling, once I am done, I simply quit and reload previous game. That way I don’t have to travel all the way back to the portal. I would assume that would still work if the portal vanished. Going through portals is always dangerous business.
