nms-spoilers

[sand pebble]

We can finally be bees

[dusty wind]

You can see one at the quicksilver merchant, should be the only one though.

(totally not the reason why I chose them, nooo..)

[sand pebble]

UNDERSTANDABLE!!!

Will it still be royal if I make another save or is it account locked I wonder

[glass flare]

well, $%$##@*. going from "this is a major update!" to "this is an expedition with no update alongside it" has been quite the whiplash this morning.

[dusty wind]

Okay, good news - everyone gets all of the posters, the flags are of course still locked behind the factions though

[gloomy isle]

Oh well, at least we still have the big one to come

The more dev time the better

[sand pebble]

Oh thank goodness
I wanted that blue poster so badly

[glass flare]

they could have at least put these swarm ships in the main game so we had something to play with outside the expedition. ah well, enjoy the expedition folks.

[dusty wind]

Sure but we don't know too much about that yet though - they could implement them after the expedition ends maybe, I could see that.

[rigid monolith]

natural weaver baby lezgo

[agile ether]

Where my green sage buddies at?

[glad kernel]

OK, I'm blue

I love blue

[gloomy isle]

How's the expedition so far

[gloomy isle]

They probably will. Iirc the Atlantid fragment ships were an expedition only thing but they've been reused for core game stuff since

Plus there's been a lot of work out into the swarm from the looks of things

[ebon spoke]

The expedition is sorta designed to build up towards the boss fight, makes sense that they don't want you doing it early

[dusty wind]

nice, but for the love of anything you love.. bring MT-Blaster upgrades, like I did. The swarmers are pretty rough otherwise.

[gloomy isle]

Is there any lore so far?

[dusty wind]

What are you asking for, specifially?

[glass flare]

I just think it would have made more sense to make this swarm narrative an ongoing part of the game since it directly relates to VM and seemingly pushes the main storyline forward, instead of being stuck in a limited-time expedition. but whatevs.

[runic mesa]

Anyone have confirmed responses for Sage? Or is the game auto selecting everyone after all?

[dusty wind]

Both, it seems. Apparently there are responses tied to the factions, but the game is also auto-balancing teams if you're unlucky.

[mental socket]

Patch notes have a gif of the atlas station blowing up

Fancy stuff

Goodbye atlas

The big hive ship shoots it with the laser and it just poofs

[runic mesa]

Switch will likely be coming into it late. Hope it still let's me choose.

[polar rain]

It seems to be random. You can put in the same answers as someone else and get different results.

It also seems to be locked to your account.

[runic mesa]

So it is chosen for you... kinda

[glad kernel]

If that's the case, then my luck seems to be good, as I got the blue color I like.

[dusty wind]

it's not just random it seems, it's probably auto-balancing the amount of people in teams, but yeah.

[mental socket]

Claw

Big thing

I half expected them to be able to destroy whole planets from how the laser was hyped up in the notes

[sleek dragon]

do we get to choose the team or is it random guys?

[gusty stream]

It chooses based on the answers you give

[sleek dragon]

oh aight

[near forge]

I haven‘t gotten to the patch notes yet nor seen the trailer (not at home rn), but part of this made it into the main game no?

And I fully expect this to perhaps happen with the anniversary update too.

The unique Emergence and Cursed enemies were also only added later on no?

[gloomy isle]

The crashed swarm ships did, yeah

If this is a prelude to the summer update they'll probably do what they did with singularity

Where they introduced the anomaly autophage to players who'd not done the expedition

[near forge]

Yeah this smells exactly like Singularity

[gloomy isle]

8 weeks is also oddly specific for an expedition which probably doesn't need more than the usual

[glass flare]

I haven't seen the expedition lore yet, but from the narrative setup this expedition is a lot more impactful to the storyline than Singularity. you've got VM literally wiping out Atlas stations

[ebon spoke]

only a little way in, but there is a lot of lore here to dig into.

[glass flare]

which, as an aside, the way HG pretends to allow you to take sides in the conflict, and then just completely ignores that in future events, is really unfortunate. like I just helped VM create a foothold into the universe in Worlds. now she's my enemy again? what?

or going back to Singularity, I chose VM over Atlas. that decision was never followed up on at all sadly

[grizzled apex]

https://x.com/i/status/2059676755447976365

Claim yer prize, all who bet on Jason being a sponsored streamer!

Jason Plays (@JasonPlaysNMS)

I am have a sponsored stream for the new #NoMansSkySwarm update with @XainesWorld, come hangout!
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https://t.co/BJPE59QtlJ

X · May 27, 2026, 4:43 PM

[grizzled apex]

I haven't been able to play yet, but from the team setup they've got it seems like this expedition is the ultimate realisation of whatever they were going for in Singularity with the choices and progression.

And it's a good sign that the system's pretty robust and usable beyond just this one single expedition, potentially even being usable in the main game.

[mint lynx]

Where da twitch rewards Jason

[compact coyote]

Love the initial questioning! I’m a weaver

[ebon spoke]

I like how it locks your character customization to only use your team's colour

better get the colour you like!

[compact coyote]

I’m blue team!

[glass flare]

sure, it's much more impressive on that front than Singularity. my point was just that it's all a bit meaningless if the choices don't stick with your character as you move forwards in the narrative. so it's definitely fancier, but falls into the same trap of being a "bottle episode" where allegiances between Atlas and VM are whatever HG want you to be in a particular event

[shut widget]

This expedition is bugged asf

[elfin hound]

I have taken this damn test like 7 times now and got royal every time. Is it rigged?

[compact coyote]

Who was that crying for help in the questioning

[shut widget]

Every player mobs stack on them

This make abnormal lags

[near forge]

The plan described in the Sentinel pillar lore always lead to us being an „enemy“ of the VM eventually, she was merely using us for a bit.

Unless you‘re into being merged with other travellers, that is…

[glass flare]

which only reinforces that we lack in true agency in the game's narrative. we the player read that lore, yet still decided to help VM in Worlds. the game didn't even give us a choice in that matter

[near forge]

Oh that I agree on, to change that HG would have needed to write ISM very differently though.

No purple systems without VM…

[glass flare]

what I don't like about that is the writers often lie to the player. they present choices that seem impactful, but those choices don't actually have any impact. the narrative that the player spins for themselves (I am pro-Atlas, I am anti-Atlas) aren't respected by the writers at all. one event you're helping Atlas, another you're helping VM, another you're fighting VM. it's just a series of narrative set pieces where the player is simply a passenger

[near forge]

I can see where you‘re coming from, but I also feel like we often assume that just by helping one of those sides, this automatically means that we get the status of an ally.

But it‘s moreso that we‘re being used as a tool in most cases, I think.

And this does mean we don‘t have as much agency as there‘s implied, yup.

HG tends to hype this kind of stuff a bit too much in their patch notes

[gloomy isle]

I just think that these kinds of far reaching decisions tend to not work well with this type of game, and devs usually figure that out after they experiment with it a bit. Over time they'd have to have written two entirely divergent plots

Here, all the faction stuff is self contained to the expedition.

[ebon spoke]

I think a good part of a potential tenth anniversary update could be to overhaul some of the story elements to have multiple branching paths. Now that the VM is an established character who is in conflict with the Atlas, it makes sense for the player to be able to pick a side.

[mint lynx]

Didn't switch use to get exp only updates same day? Fishing the cursed garbage truck, where the space war update at

[gloomy isle]

I feel like this would make sense but only if they were to implement an ultimate conclusion to the storyline

[sand pebble]

Can we find the person who put a McDonald’s on the world of glass and give them a medal

[near forge]

I‘m split on this cause on one hand player agency is a good thing, but part of the reason why I still look back so fondly at og NMS is because the vibe much stronger embodied us just being a mere part of this ecosystem, even if one of the more „priviliged“ ones.

Main Character Syndrome is existent in almost all games nowadays, so I really appreciated the total freedom and making up your own roleplaying background that was present when NMS first launched

[glass flare]

I don't think we need to be the Main Character in order for us to feel like we have some say in our relationship to the bigger forces at work

[gloomy isle]

I do think that given the lore it does make sense for the player character to be the crux of how this all concludes. At the end of the day travellers are one of the most important aspects of the lore, and we're all iterations of the same one.

AR's story did have us start lost and kind of unimportant but I don't think there's any other natural conclusion than to have us be the centre of what ends up happening to be honest

[near forge]

AR was kinda what kicked it off actually

And personally I rly dislike the way the Artemis questline starts cause if I make a new character, and just ignore it…that basically makes my char a selfish prick lol.

[ebon spoke]

I think they could pull off some branching paths without sacrificing the overall narrative, but it is a bit of a fine line. An example I've brought up before, they could have an Atlas path and an Abyss path. Choosing one locks you out of the other, but they wouldn't have any major gameplay differences. Just give the player access to different lore depending on what they pick, throw in a special upgrade or two, and maybe some cosmetics that are path specific.

[gloomy isle]

True. Though I just think the entire lore as it exists now is incompatible with us not being the central character

[gloomy isle]

I think atlas rises did a good job to be honest. Same overall plot, but certain decisions will affect individual characters and relationships

[near forge]

This I can get behind for sure.

Perhaps give the Atlas Path another polish while we‘re at it.

Honestly doing these questlines on new saves after having been through them just always sucks.

I enjoyed the base npc‘s stuff cause I initially missed a lot of optional dialogue there, but still.

[ebon spoke]

Something like In Stellar Multitudes is a bit more tricky though. You obviously don't want to lock purple systems behind a specific path so you'd either need an Atlas way and an Abyss way or just have a single quest that works with either path

[gloomy isle]

All I feel like the story needs atm (other than more content ofc) is a short quest which forms more of an obvious link to the void mother stuff which comes after the artemis path, and maybe some interstitial quest steps to bring it together a bit and make it feel more cohesive

[glass flare]

they could have had an alternate storyline where you deny VM but instead they find another Traveller to do the job

so either way the purple worlds are created, but depending on your choice you're either on VM's bad side or they're slightly less annoyed with you

but the Worlds storyline was very much Main Character Syndrome where you specifically are the VERY SPECIAL Traveller and only you can do this job

[compact coyote]

Ceryst VII is one of the most earth like planets I’ve seen ngl

[elfin hound]

That was probably me lol

It seems I am doomed to red team no matter how I answer the questions

[rigid monolith]

what is happening

holy shit?

i got to the point where the swarm queen lasers the atlas

then got tp'd to a portal where time was schmoovin

and then got the hello world intro again

what in the shite

[near forge]

Ah damn I gotta avoid this channel for the next while, it has become so normal to stick around here, I have forgotten that there are things I actually don‘t want to have spoiled for myself 🥲

[untold cedar]

So are we allowed to scream "HERATIC" at the guy that posted that fake headline about the hivemind 😂😂

Not @molten karma im talking about the article.

[molten karma]

For now yes I do think there is a high chance of procgen and combat though coming for the anniversary as this expedition is so combat and Atlas heavy tbh.

Not as this bozo said though

[shut widget]

"Construct a prismatic core"

This mean I must wait?

For other players progress bar?

[molten karma]

For those that have more knowledge about the inner workings of the game and datamined it. Is it technically possible if HG ever decided to do a huge procgen overhaul and reboot of the universe. Would it technically be possible for them to implement it as a new mode/save like Abandoned mode so those who want to keep their progress and bases/planets would be technically fine and anyone who would want to experience a new universe could technically move onto a new save with a reseeded universe?

When people create new saves they can essentially just toggle it or select what iteration of the game/universe they want essentially?

[ebon spoke]

Yeah, they could just keep the current proc gen files around and use those for the 'old' universe

They already did something similar on a very small scale with Worlds Part I to preserve infested planets

[shut widget]

I hate this fucking community progress bars

What you even mean I start to playing for hours to even not get expedition items?

Who even is that briliant to think this is a good idea?
Yeah make community be more together...
I see some players couple of seconds and beside this sometimes got immense lags l because of how this game is optymalized in term to have manny players in same place

[hot trout]

Hmm... should I initialize from existing save or start a new one...

[shut widget]

New one. Because in half way you hit community progress bar

What's for now is around 0%

[hot trout]

Yes, but you can hop back and forth anyway

[ebon spoke]

It doesn't really make a difference this time

You have limited character customization and I don't think you can bring your ship over either

[hot trout]

Hmm

[raven salmon]

Are the colors just given out at random? I got blue.. I’ve seen other blue people but also red and green.. what do the colors mean really

[ebon spoke]

Colours are which team you're on. Doesn't really mean much but it's probably influenced by your answers at the start

[raven salmon]

Alr thanks.. so were the questions meaningless and everyone just got random colors?

[gusty stream]

At least the actual expedition part doesn't take very long

[ebon spoke]

it seems like most of the time the answers matter, but sometimes it gives out random colours to correct and keep the teams evenly sized.

We don't know for sure what it's doing though

[raven salmon]

Thank you.. what color you get?

[distant bronze]

crazy thing is, depending on what HG decides to do as the aftermath of the two month swarm war, the result might be a corruption of the autophage as Hiveborn

[hot trout]

Ha

No

[gloomy isle]

If anything these swarm ships are going to be used in a part of the update's quest line. Providing it has one ofc

And the exploding atlas stations probably won't be a one off type thing I'd wager

[distant bronze]

Swarm wrecks and parts are landing all over autophage worlds, theres no way thats not going to have an effect on them

[hot trout]

Frankly, im shocked they implemented it

[hot trout]

Autophage arent confined to dissonant worlds

[gloomy isle]

This expedition is by far the most setpiece-y thing NMS has had

[mental socket]

Atlas stations are the literal representation of Atlas itself. So something within the simulation being able to destroy a thing that was designed to be undestroyable by its very creator is alarming

A power that can actually affect things on large scale

[hot trout]

Well, part of my shock is the description of what happened when the destruction of an Atlas Interface was attempted before

[distant bronze]

but you'll always find them there, theyre natural salvagers for their chassis, I see the parts of the swarm ships working their way into that ecosystem

[mental socket]

When did this happen before in lore? And what were the results? I seem to have forgotten

[hot trout]

The surrounding star systems were wiped from the map

There was no trace of anything in its place

[mental socket]

Hecc

[hot trout]

Frick where the heck was it

Istg if my catalog hasn't been properly recording planetary archive encounters...

WHERE DID I SEE THIS

I KNOW I SAW IT

[gloomy isle]

This definitely feels like the start of the void mother's actual plan coming to fruition. If so, I'm very glad they're finally showing and not telling

[hot trout]

I think otherwise, she seems to desire to work with the Atlas

[gloomy isle]

I think she has a desire to change the Atlas, not destroy it, but I don't think that necessarily involves working with it

Personally I think she plans to forcibly override it to a certain degree

[hot trout]

WHY CANT I FIND THE RECORD

[mental socket]

Void mother hasn't really been hostile towards travelers before tho. Just towards atlas

So why see us as a thing to eliminate now

Could be another entity entirely. There is the infestation but that doesn't seem intelligent enough for such coordinated attacks

[hot trout]

Stupid stupid stupid

[gloomy isle]

Either way I suspect it's tied strongly to the void. Maybe her entrance opened the way for other things. It's all found on dissonant worlds after all

[mental socket]

Swarm of glass or whatever it was. Something that originates from world of glass? Something archived away for whatever reason

Something capable of assaulting atlas itself

[hot trout]

The archives are broken and twisted

[distant bronze]

Part of me suspects the void mother is behind the swarms attacks on atlas stations, but indirectly. Sort of a weird autoimmune response from when we added her code to the atlas' during the stellar multitudes quest

like, the swarms are maybe detecting that bit of code we added and registering it as some kind of virus and attacking the stations

[gloomy isle]

While true, death doesn't particularly mean the same to a traveller as it does a regular being.

It could be her keeping us out of her way, for example. Maybe our role in this is to eventually somehow remedy the situation and ensure the best outcome. Neither VM or Atlas seem particularly sane after all

[ebon spoke]

I'm most of the way through the expedition and so far it seems like the Swarm might be something... different. Possibly triggered by the Void Mother but not working for her directly

[hot trout]

Ok wow, my frustration had me uncover the secret to the birth of korvax...

Not what I was looking for, but... useful

[gloomy isle]

That's interesting. Maybe this is our first look at the design language of the world of glass in that case?

Atlas ish circuitry but bare and grey

[hot trout]

I am going to go insane

[gloomy isle]

Someone posted the quote earlier, I think?

In this channel iirc

[hot trout]

Waitwaitwaitwait

Maybe derelicts

[mental socket]

Which one would be the most combat capable twitch drop/expedition reward ships to use?

[hot trout]

AAAAAAAAA

[compact coyote]

Hey can someone paste all of the questions it asks in the beginning?

[hot trout]

Ugh, I cant dwell on this

FRICK

I MISSED A QUESTION

[molten karma]

So do we just sit and wait now? It says to construct but everything is on a timer.

[molten karma]

Can you imagine if the leak was legit but he misunderstood the whole anniversary thing and time framing lmao.

Honestly though it's one thing to be expedition only but are the timers necessary to?

[distant bronze]

honestly, who knows at this point, he might have been describing the anniversary update, which, after swarm, kind of fits as an aftermath update

[hot trout]

Or, shock of all shocks, it was fake

[molten karma]

I mean tbh with or without leak I firmly believe a bigger combat and procgen update is coming after this expedition that's for sure. To what scale who knows.

[distant bronze]

same, swarm is, as someone said, reading very heavily of a "set the stage" update. We're going to have a lot of destroyed atlas stations and swarm wreckage out there, no way to know what thats going to cause

[molten karma]

That's why I was asking if technically a whole universe reset could technically be done without affecting the current one with a option like Abandoned Mode because it's seemingly heading that direction tbh. At the very least new star systems.

[hot trout]

Abandoned mode changes the habitation of star systems, nothing else

[molten karma]

I mean Ayy said it was possible since purple systems kind of already do that.

[distant bronze]

I wouldnt say reset so much as, maybe glitches and things the atlas was keeping under control suddenly have a lot more freedom across the star systems

[zenith perch]

They do change something more than you're saying

[hot trout]

To the procgen?

[zenith perch]

Salvage boxes in stations (the small yellow things) are coded to have good stuff in them constantly

Depends if you count the lack of freighters as a procgen change tbh

[hot trout]

Tbh the ones I have found even outside abandoned mode tend to be rather decent

[zenith perch]

I've encountered a pirate once but that's only because I went into another galaxy mode, so yeah

Tbf my abandoned save has scarce resources and very high purchase prices, so it takes a very long time to get anything

If I can somehow build a corvette one day it'll be one hell of an expensive investment

[molten karma]

I could see purple systems being the test bed for something like this since Origins adding new planets was the test bed for adding new systems.

[hot trout]

Just find a salvage planet and bypass the cost almost entirely

[zenith perch]

Idk where I can even build it though, I don't remember there being a building place in the abandoned stations

Not for corvettes at least.

[tulip star]

Stuff in the patch notes about fixing ship trails, mine are probably worse than they were before

[hot trout]

There is

[distant bronze]

they added them a few updates back when they added them to pirate stations

[hot trout]

Its... a bit of a walk

[distant bronze]

you'd think theyd have teleporters too

[mental socket]

I really have to wonder how they'll execute the final battle once the timegate is over

Will it be multiple instances fighting a shared health pool swarmer mothership thingy? Or just each player killing their own little individual boss fight

[molten karma]

Do we even know if its one time gate or several so the last phase is drip fed?

[mental socket]

Idk. Just calling it timegate out of habit. But meant the collective effort

It's planned in a way that it definitely takes us the full duration of the expedition to collectively build the prismatic core

[molten karma]

I don't know I think they're expecting to much community participating for two months lol

[mental socket]

Doubt the end result is even in the game yet. Just like how they had to patch in normandy back in expedition 2 when the collective effort reached 100%

With that exp, there was some suspicious rewinding of progress during the night before the planned patch tho

[ebon spoke]

If you pay close attention during the earlier version of the battle, at the atlas interface, it's basically a reskin of the pirate dreadnaught

so the final version will probably play out like that

[mint lynx]

Does the new gun have anything unique about it?

[mental socket]

Probably some unnatural base/max stats that can't be achieved with regulars out in the wild multitools

[dusk halo]

do we know any lore about the swarm

why did they just randomly appear

who are they

[hard stirrup]

So I'm pretty sure the expedition quiz is a total sham. The game relies on hidden data from your account to see if you most closely match the Gek, Vy'keen, or Korvax, and you get matched up with that no matter what your answers are. Does anyone know specifically what stats the game uses? Is it standing? Most systems visited? Something else?

[dusk halo]

idk

[mint lynx]

The quiz can't be real you need a decent amount of people in every category
Also people would be more likely to go blue or red id guess too

[hot trout]

...huh

Didnt think of the fragments in that way...

[ebon spoke]

Probably not pulling a specific stat if it's account wide. The game does already use your account ID to roll certain things for some expeditions like your starting multitool and ship seeds, so if it is completely unrelated from the quiz answers then it's probably that

[gloomy isle]

So far this might be my favourite expedition

It really just feels like a story quest

[molten karma]

It's just a shame there is no way to replay any of this content when it's gone

So much effort but who knows maybe it will be at some point just like Emergence. Still waiting on the squid things and weird time loop and hazard thing to make it into the game.

Honestly the same can be said about the old weekend missions to.

[grizzled apex]

honestly, this one feels kinda reminiscent of singularity in a way. Wonder if that means it'll lead into whatever comes next, or if I'm just being delusional...

it's a very fleshed out concept for an expedition, and they changed up the entire community mission system to allow for multi-team support for any community mission that requires it

[molten karma]

Bomber can you comment on this I posted earlier? It does really feel with the whole Atlas thing something new may be coming to the universe. Despite the fake leak covering it I do think certain things are pointing to more of rebirth of the universe it feels like.

[gloomy isle]

Has anyone scrapped any of the new physics parts? What do they give?

[distant bronze]

a lot of things are canon wise being affected that weve only heard of in lore, this is the first time atlas stations are being destroyed in large numbers. Thats going to leave a mark on its own.

[grizzled apex]

I'm pretty sure it's possible from what we know about the proc gen so far. Purple systems and Prime planets generate off the premise of a new preset having brand new generation parameters. I can new universe rules which are only utilized when the user boots a certain game mode to be possible. Whether HG would lock a chunk of content behind a new save is an entirely different conversation though.

[molten karma]

What if they allow the import of current inventory, stats, and ships but just not bases? Would something like that be possible?

[grizzled apex]

Has anyone tested out just how permanent the change is? I've only managed to check a few strings but it looks like something that'd revert after a reload / rewarp tbh. I can't imagine the hive blowing up space stations, player freighters and atlas stations being a permanent action by HG (even though that'd be insanely fun if they pulled it off)

[gloomy isle]

To be honest this is the first time NMS has started showing instead of just telling

[ebon spoke]

it's definitely not a synced change. Otherwise there would be no Atlas Stations left anywhere near the expedition area

[gloomy isle]

Is it just atlas stations?

[grizzled apex]

Yea if the save data structure is the same (which it most likely would be) for the new game mode, it wouldn't be difficult at all to allow importing data. Even if the save format was different though they have some pretty good save file update code internally they could repurpose.

[grizzled apex]

Text strings indicate space stations, player freighters fleets, civilian fleets and atlas stations being targeted by the hive. Not sure when or where though.

[grizzled apex]

The 2nd one here makes me think the hive might show up outside of the expedition too, unless a milestone specifically gives us a freighter.

[distant bronze]

im honestly wondering if the goal is to rework the expedition swarm and invasion fleet mechanic into a player controlled or radient event that happens around the universe, maybe with pirate dread fleets thrown in attacking systems

[ebon spoke]

At the moment there's just one encounter with the hive we can get to (because of the community milestone gate). It's at an Atlas station but I'm honestly not sure if it actually blows it up yet

[molten karma]

That's very interesting thank you for elaborating.

[grizzled apex]

Just going off text strings it only blows it up if you fail the boss battle

[ebon spoke]

Probably the later encounter we haven't gotten to yet, then

The one we have is cut short

[humble kayak]

You know what I'm wondering

[grizzled apex]

Keep in mind it's quite late and I can't really start the expedition yet so I'm going off of a hunch about where the strings are used. There's a few duplicate-esque versions and a bunch of variations of the boss battle strings.

[grizzled apex]

Oh? How so? Do you not get to battle it fully? Does it warp out?

[humble kayak]

where the fuck are the sentinels? Are you telling me those tincans are on our asses the INSTANT we pick a dandelion on some backwater hellhole

[grizzled apex]

Sorry for the questions, i really wanna jump in but #project-skyscraper's already ruined my sleep schedule 😅

[humble kayak]

And yet we're getting swarmed, literally, by a bunch of robot bug zombie things

and they're nowhere to be found

[ebon spoke]

It warps you out. Like when you go through the portal in the main questline

[humble kayak]

Real helpful, sentinels.

[grizzled apex]

Oh interesting... Just gives you a shot of the hive squaring up against an atlas interface then?

[grizzled apex]

It looks like the hive are an ||Atlas Subroutine?|| Which might explain the sentinel's reluctance to help?

[humble kayak]

reluctance seems like an understatement

But that'd make sense

[grizzled apex]

I saw text strings for ejecting out of your ship from the quick menu. Doesn't replace any corvette lines so I wonder what that's for

Might be giving normal ships space-walk access eventually if unused rn?

Anyone get the option to eject from a ship in the exped yet? Could just be an override for a milestone since corvette building is disabled here it seems?

[distant bronze]

sounds like the update added a LOT of foundational functions

[grizzled apex]

I'm really excited about what they do with the new community mission system going forward. It looks pretty flexible on the server end.

[distant bronze]

thats what im kind of excited about, this invasion system looks so fleshed out and realized there is no way it stays expedition exclusive. It also sounds, pretty flexible in terms of what can be plugged into it?

[glass flare]

I feel like it could potentially lead into some fleet vs fleet feature where we bring a fleet of combat freighters against a hive fleet

[molten karma]

Maybe 2x-3x times the size with interiors 😉

[fallow beacon]

But the way it is implemented right now its completely locked to the expedition isn't it?

[dusky gazelle]

My prediction is that no matter what we do, we lose the final battle which will lead into the next story and big 10 year anniversary update.

[grizzled apex]

Oh interesting, the destroyed atlas stations are stored in your save file

[molten karma]

I wonder if we'll get the ability to do so in normal saves at some point

[grizzled apex]

Also, it looks like we might reinitialize in a later part of the expedition and have to do othe personality quiz again

Wonder if HG's gonna make everyone play through all 3 teams? But then how would locking away the team specific cosmetics work?

Oh woah

The ancient GcRewardTimeWarp finally has actual fields

it might finally do something

[ebon spoke]

We do, but it doesn't change our team

[grizzled apex]

Ah gotcha

[ebon spoke]

Seems like restarting the expedition wont even change your team

[grizzled apex]

So just for lore reasons then

[ebon spoke]

see anything in the save that might keep track of it?

[grizzled apex]

yep, its actually stored on the servers for some reason

Whenever you auth with the servers, they return the team you're in for the current community mission

there doesnt appear to be a new route to submit a player team though, so Im assuming that's automatically done once you submit a mission / contributions as part of your team.

[worn spindle]

no way to change teams then?

[ebon spoke]

aha, so the answer to why the quiz only seems to mean anything sometimes is that it only works the first time, the servers remember and you keep the same team or something like that then

It's likely they didn't want a repeat of singularity where people just reloaded to get both endings/rewards

[grizzled apex]

Seems that way. I can test that a lil better tomorrow by actually choosing a team and then checking at what point its set serverside, since my default team (without playing yet) seems to be set to "red" (Royals)

[dusty wind]

... not me only finding out now that was a thing, dang

[worn spindle]

if you figure anything out could you potentially ping me?

[grizzled apex]

Yea actually locking in player choice makes sense if they're gonna make a permanent change to the anomaly based on this

[dusky gazelle]

I think they want to keep the teams balanced and auto assign you no matter how you answer. I stand by my prediction that no matter what we do we lose the final battle leading into the 10 year update.

[glass flare]

good, that would be a refreshing change

[grizzled apex]

seems likely, going off how much HG seem to avoid player agency in the storyline's matters

[dusky gazelle]

I actually like the idea of losing the final battle. One of the best Sci FI of all time, the remade Battlestar Galactica was very dark.... This game needs some of that

[distant bronze]

oh? where do those appear?

[glass flare]

the entirety of the game's lore is dark though lol

[dusky gazelle]

True but we all woek toward a goal and FAIL..... Love that idea

[grizzled apex]

nowhere iirc. its the reward HG used in one of the pre release bits where Sean "sleeps" in front of a monolith I think

[dusty wind]

Eh, I honestly don't think that we're gonna lose, but I agree that it's gonna lead into 10th anni update

[glass flare]

i'm down for some optimism in stories right now given how unoptimistic I feel about real life

[distant bronze]

oh whoa, thats going to be interesting

[glass flare]

huh, maybe an easter egg for OG players for the anniversary

[gloomy isle]

There is a section where time fast forwards but idk if that's got anything to do with it

[grizzled apex]

ah, thats probably where its used then

[dusty wind]

I'm mostly going off of the milestone descriptions.. the only one time when we were scripted to lose until now in this expedition, it was called "confront" the Hive - the last milestone we can get is called something like "defeat" the Hive, if I remember right no? I know, far fetched, but everything is, at this point.

[grizzled apex]

I should stop looking through diffs without playing lol, GGs

[glass flare]

looking through diffs is the real game

[ebon spoke]

I think that's the weather hazard from the cursed reused, but I'm not sure

[grizzled apex]

Oh interesting. Does it have a fade to black, or just time going by really quickly and noticeably?

[dusky gazelle]

I watched Capt Steve's playthrough of the first 2 rounds and can't wait for the xbox release so I can play. Love my xbox (halo edition series x) but hate that for the past several updates we wait until Friday at least. Sometimes Monday.

[ebon spoke]

its the day/night cycle sped up

[summer hound]

Apparently activities are released periodically??? Is that good or bad?

In the expedition I mean

[hot trout]

Im okay with it

Sometimes expeditions feel like theyre done and over with so quickly

[runic mesa]

I wonder if the teams will be relevant either for the 10th anniversary content or in the future. Going out of their way to lock something like that for just an expedition is kinda odd.

[runic mesa]

Added bonus of giving Switch time to catch up.

[hot trout]

@hard stirrup is under the impression that the three fragments are based on the three races of the triad. If thats the case, I think the teams signify something very important

I've viewed each race of the triad as representing different aspects of the Atlas itself. Maybe it inherited some of those aspects from its creator?

Should something like this be the case, it could give us more insight into the minds of both the Atlas and the Creator than we've ever had before

[lament basalt]

So, what do you guys think "Glass" is?

[hot trout]

I know what it is

Well... unless this expedition challenges the idea...

Maybe the world of glass is the entirety of the systems outside the simulations

[midnight saffron]

I got weaver ;-;

[mental socket]

@grizzled apex any idea what the final encounter with swarm will be like? If all the pieces are already in place or if there's missing stuff that gets activated with a later patch like with Normandy

[rigid monolith]

btw, do we get any funky stuff if we refine the swarmer bits?

like, take them to get scrapped

[quasi oyster]

So, did HG give us a heads-up before starting an expedition that you weren’t going to be able to copy over your starship? Or was that maybe just a bug? Cus it really was surprising to me that I couldn’t do that - and yet still claim previous expedition ships…

[quasi oyster]

As always, I suspect this MIGHT be more of a beta-testing thing for some system of faction joining featuring in Light No Fire. Maybe just to gauge player response to it.

Personally I’m not waving any “Yay, I’m team ‘Weaver”…: flags anytime soon…

[queen oyster]

is vault of glass a time gated thing? i see 0% progress for it on the expedition

[deep mountain]

@runic mesa so it begins we waiting for the update again , the last small update took 2 business weeks to release then didn't get patched for 3

[shut widget]

"Bring the community together"
Yeah and some fucker can kill you on build base on global checkpoint. I really doesn't get who have idea to make it in community progress bar

[deep mountain]

Best to turn pvp off

[summer hound]

Is pvp on in the expedition?

[deep mountain]

I would assume so it's always on by default

[summer hound]

How do I turn it off

[deep mountain]

Settings

[runic mesa]

Given how slow the community milestone progress is currently in the expedition, I'm not really worried.

[deep mountain]

I'm slightly worried at the exorbitant ammount of waiting each update
Thursday is a release day for nintendo so there's still hope for this week

[runic mesa]

NMS is pushing the Switch 1 to its limit. 1-3 weeks is probably going to be the new normal now.

They could surprise us and drop it tomorrow though. Who knows.

[deep mountain]

This update looks like what the YouTube videos of liberators looked like besides space battles

[gloomy isle]

I'm impressed they keep switch 1 updated ngl

[shut widget]

Maybe this is my issue. Still this wrecks have shit hitbox

[runic mesa]

You mean the Liquidator expedition? I played that.

[shut widget]

And even when you think you grab all from it

It request to more

[deep mountain]

Yeah looks like the same concept war as a community but with more ship battles armor as a reward

Instead of mech parts

[runic mesa]

Honestly, same. They could have thrown in the towel with Voyagers and no one would have blamed them.

[gloomy isle]

They all have the same parts and all the parts have a waypoint

[hot trout]

You gotta make sure the highlight appeara

[runic mesa]

No teams or factions though. It was everyone against Sentinels and horrors

[deep mountain]

Teams is just extra sauce and flavoring I'm pretty sure you don't even really pick your team

[runic mesa]

It's been all but confirmed that you don't, I think. Locked to account

[gloomy isle]

You pick the first time but you're locked in after that. Even on different saves

[deep mountain]

I see hope i get vykeen then

[runic mesa]

Hmm. I'll try for Sage then, when Switch gets it.

Green's my favorite color. That's the only reason lol

[hot trout]

None of them are vy'keen

[runic mesa]

Probably to prevent what happened when Singularity tried this.

[deep mountain]

I'm pretty sure vykeen are the red colour the warriors

[hot trout]

Royals

[deep mountain]

Oooh even got fancy names instead of mage thief warrior nice

[hot trout]

Its sage, weaver, and royal, and while they share similarities with the triad, its not 1:1

[runic mesa]

Royal (red), Weaver (blue), Sage (green)

[deep mountain]

To me that just sounds like flavoring and it's meant to be the classic 3 class system but I'm open to being wrong

[hard stirrup]

Though most people seem assigned to teams they like...there is a certain affinity to Royal with Vy'keen, Sage with Gek, and Weavers with Korvax. Exactly what profile data the game uses to figure out this affinity I don't know but the game seems to get it right most of the time.

[hot trout]

None really fit with thief though

[deep mountain]

Korvax would they build stuff and gadgets just like a artificer thief sub class

[hot trout]

Weavers are

Sounds very mage-like to me

[deep mountain]

Good technology can seem like magic

[hot trout]

And sages line up more with monk or druid types

Balance of reality

[hard stirrup]

You know, now that you say this, I wonder if this is somehow related to LNF. LNF is more about magic than technology but it very much still seems to be a simulation run the Atlas, or at least an Atlas. Now I wonder if Royal, Sage, and Weaver will be LNF classes or factions.

[hushed wyvern]

do we know as a fact light no fire is same universe or even lore as no man sky?

like, i know is an obvious assumption i think so too

[frigid valley]

No

[hot trout]

No, and i currently treat it as separate

[frigid valley]

We don't know it and for the moment there is no reason to suspect it

[violet cosmos]

Anyone tried cheating and getting past phase 3 yet?

[hushed wyvern]

the sole red icon half atlas thing can make room for a "reason"

but yeah i think its just too early

[dense quartz]

I really wish we could choose which side we're on instead of being account locked. 😭

[hot trout]

I dont understand why it seems to matter so much

[hushed wyvern]

some people like to choose

i prefer it this way tho

but i totally understand why it matters

[hard stirrup]

Same universe? Probably not. But that does distinctly look like an Atlas. I'd say probability of it being a simulation by an iteration of the Atlas is pretty high.

[hot trout]

I see it like a hand reaching for a torch

[hard stirrup]

That is not a torch.

[hushed wyvern]

yes exactly, its only the icon which objetively is too little, but it makes me think it will be related in some way lorewise

[hot trout]

You dont see it?

[hard stirrup]

You see more in the trailer...you see a section of twisted and barren terrain and as the camera zooms out it's revealed to all be inside the crimson orb.

[hard stirrup]

You need to look up what a torch is...that orb is nothing you would ever normally see on a torch.

[hot trout]

It wouldnt be a normal torch anyway

My guess is it deals with something like the theft of fire

[hard stirrup]

Of fire might not actually a central theme of the story and it's just a pretty vague name...like NMS. We do see what looks like a player carrying a torch in the trailer so fire's not gone.

[hot trout]

I mean like prometheus

The theft of fire from the gods

[hard stirrup]

Yeah, maybe. Like we take it from the Atlas of that game or something.

[hot trout]

Or its a more fantasy leaning thing

Guess we will see

[cursive ivy]

There's faction related tittles?

[hard stirrup]

I think it will be more fantasy in most aspects...but whether they call it a simulation or dream and the Atlas the creator of the simulation or the dream or some such is largely irrelevant. I think the point remains largely the same. An Atlas AI(maybe they call it a metal god or some shenanigans) running a simulation.

[cursive ivy]

I just hope there's more than 3 races

The lagomorfs are cool tho

[violet cosmos]

Funny, if you go offline I guess it's kind of a spoiler as to how this is going to look once completed

[dense quartz]

I'm offline and the model is invisible for me.

[violet cosmos]

Are you offline or do you just have multiplayer disabled

[dense quartz]

Multiplayer disabled. 😄

[cursive ivy]

Bruh

[little star]

Does anyone have a picture of the new ship type

[summer hound]

There's a new ship type?

[queen oyster]

Is vault of glass locked behind the community progression?

[violet cosmos]

Yep.

Er, wait, what is the vault of glass?

[hot trout]

One of the milestones

[blazing quiver]

how do people start the expedition?

[dense quartz]

Start a new save with expedition mode, or load an existing save, go to the space anomaly and use the expedition terminal below nada and polo, behind the nexus.

[blazing quiver]

wait I can't start the expedition with my current equipment?

[violet cosmos]

You can pass stuff through the terminal but there's no need

[dense quartz]

You can bring it with you, but you'll have to retrieve it from the same terminal.

[blazing quiver]

oh so it doesn't matter?

just start and fetch my stuff?

[hot trout]

You wont have access to it at the very beginning of the expedition

[blazing quiver]

I never did an expedition before since I started just before xeno arena

[violet cosmos]

Hm, nope. There's an Emperor of Glass and a Glass to Glass where you destroy the Hive of Glass, but no Vault of Glass I can see.

[hot trout]

Inhales ah, uhhh

Good point

Wasnt vault of glass an earlier one?

[violet cosmos]

And unfortunately you cannot skip Countermeasures and actually play the rest of the expedition. In fact, you have to autocomplete all the rest of the milestones (via editing the expedition config) which just ends the expedition. All of the rest of the milestones want you to "Construct the Prismatic Core" before it will let you actually play them 😢

[hot trout]

I figure im in the minority, but I'm okay with an expedition taking it a bit slower

[violet cosmos]

Part of the reason I did it was so I could figure out what the hell to do for my expedition generator. I will have to replace all the phase 3 milestones to make it playable offline :\

Which makes it pretty pointless

[hot trout]

Hmm, do you think after the community progress is complete, it will just allow regular progression?

[violet cosmos]

Not if it acts like other community driven events. The problem is it has to confirm the community goal is reached, which it can't do offline. It'll probably work fine in the Trancender version, which (I think) uses a dll to block specific calls to the HG servers but let others through, so you can play any expedition but still have awareness of community goals.

[hot trout]

Hmm, hopefully

[violet cosmos]

But like if you go back and play Leviathan, it can't hit the servers so it thinks the memory thingies are still C class rather than S or whatever they ended at.

Similar deal with Singularity.

[hot trout]

I see

[little star]

I thought I read something about it in the update notes

[violet cosmos]

Didn't see anything after claiming all the expedition rewards.

[hushed wyvern]

they give you a suit and ship with colors related to the faction u get sorted into, but they are normal fighters for what i have seen, maybe it was that what you read?

[indigo brook]

Question

How do I actually progress past phase 3 step 4?

The current expedition is fun but I've managed nothing

[violet cosmos]

You don't, not through conventional means. You have to wait for the community goal to be met. They intend for you to log in multiple times a day to complete those three quests at the Anomaly.

[indigo brook]

Ohhh ok

Well I guess I'm doing my part!!

[grizzled apex]

Didn't have much time to check yesterday, but I'll try diving in today. I need to actually play the expedition a lil to figure out what's unused though.

They've made a lot of changes to how space battles work overall with this update though. I noticed text strings for the hive attacking playe freighters, the space anomaly and civilian freighters, but I'm not sure if all of these are implemented yet. The only two space battles I saw explicitly set were the incomplete one you get to see against the Atlas, and another one which seems to be a complete battle of the swarm V the atlas

[safe quarry]

Well i can't say for certain as I don't know if the repeatable missions change, but at least up to the point where you've done the narrative beats, the only space encounter u see is vs the atlas. So that to me says this is designed to be used beyond the expedition.

Which marries up to what u see implemented.

It'll be interesting to see if these become nexus missions or organic encounters, because it feels like at least within the framework of the expedition, it uses the nexus missions to deliver the repeatable swarm encounters.

To me this for sure is content cut from the summer update to make an expedition to lead into it

So I think we can safely assume that space battles and space in general maybe, will be the focus of the big summer update

these swarms, the freighter ownership cap increase, all points to big space encounters to me

[north imp]

space combat overall would be so hype

[safe quarry]

And they already alluded to the corvette tech being applicable to other parts of the game (freighters?)

I can't remember who said it or in what interview, but someone definitely said the tech for the corvettes has applications elsewhere in NMS, not just LNF's galleons

[north imp]

oh yea i saw some parts that werent in the game that looked like multiplayer pilot seats so maybe we could get bigger ships

also lnf is gonna have galleons???

[safe quarry]

Sean said the tech for corvettes was designed originally for sailing ships in LNF

I still think LNF should have airships too

sailing ships feels very specific utility wise vs an airship that would serve as a slower, transportation and logistics companion to the dragons

I still think a very brave move for LNF to take would be to go as inventory free as possible and focus on diagetic inventories. Literally have your character and their gear be the 'inventory'. Utility belts, attachments to your backpack etc. So you only bring what you can reasonably carry.

That way we're not all running around with a 48+ slot inventory with a 12 starships sporting the same

Only grid inventories should be things like saddle bags, backpacks, pouches.

[ebon spoke]

So, they've reworked the large space battle system (previously was just pirates vs capital ship and dreadnaught vs capital ship) from a mostly hardcoded one into a much more modular one with settings for each battle type defined in a file. Within that file, we can see a list of all the large battles the game currently supports; and there are only two of them referencing the Hive. The first is SwarmHiveAtlasScripted and the second is SwarmHiveAtlas. The two are basically identical aside from the scripted one spawning the hive fleet further away. Based off the contents of the battlespawndata, it's going to be very similar to the dreadnaught battle just with an Atlas station instead of a civilian freighter and without the hive being able to flee

It's worth pointing out that the trailer showed the hive ship attacking a fleet of civilian freighters as well, but the game doesn't look to currently support that. It could be a leftover from a previous iteration of the feature, or a hint of something that will be added later

[grizzled apex]

Ah glad to get more corroboration on this. Wasn't sure if I was reading the new structs right last night.

[grizzled apex]

There's strings for the boss bar for the hive attacking the space anomaly, civilian freighters, the player freighter and space stations too rn, but I couldn't find the space battle definitions for those yet so they're likely unused.

So HGs made both the community team mission system quite modular as well as space battles. I could see a future update add both of these in to the main game later on.

[humble kayak]

I imagine it's too early to tell, but have we seen any new content in the datamines?

[grizzled apex]

I'll go through another pass in a bit, but the only thing I remember was text strings for ejecting from your ship from the quick menu. Couldn't find references to it in other files so it seemed unused

[ebon spoke]

The only values the GcSpaceBattleFlagshipType component will allow at the moment are None, Freighter, and AtlasStation

[grizzled apex]

Ah, gotcha. Though There isn't a SpaceBattle spawn definition using freighter yet either iirc?

[ebon spoke]

The pirate dreadnaught does, but not the hive

[sour fossil]

I see the SwarmDrone as ship class, but I assume that's only to have the swarm drones ship behaviour, there's no actual ship scene we could use?

[ebon spoke]

Think its just there so it can be used by the ship spawning system

There's a swarm frigate in there as well for the same reason I'm pretty sure, because it doesn't really have usable stats

[grizzled apex]

Ah, despite all the modularity the number of possible space battle definitions is still locked to an enum?

[ebon spoke]

Yeah, it's just got an AISpaceshipComponent on it, none of the stuff it would need to be ownable

[glass flare]

it's been a minute since I booted up the game, but did they improve the lighting in this update? the volumetric lighting seems better than it used to be

[mint lynx]

Anything cool in the files for the wow raid update NMS gave us?

[grizzled apex]

Space Battles were reworked quite a lot to allow HG to set up multiple variations (probably for the hive) and there are unused text strings for the hive attacking space stations, space anomalies, player freighters and civilian freighters. Could be added to the main game in the future.

[native carbon]

oh something evil is being planned

"save the entire universe" expedition incoming 😂

[dusty wind]

Eh, could just be them adding it as a variation the the base game "Save the freighter" event after the expedition, wouldn't read too much into it until we see it.

[cosmic anvil]

maybe we should let it die

(I answered to the opposite in the personality test :P)

[sour fossil]

I believe they did that with Remnant update

that's when HG changed their lighting systems, rendering all mods touching on scenes with lighting outdated

[zenith perch]

Good. Expanding these systems is great.

[zenith perch]

If they nerf us sure

[hard stirrup]

Looks like HG are choosing the path of peace here. I think the algorithm designating people to the faction they would have wanted anyway did a pretty good job but ultimately people were assigned to a group without any say in it. So it looks like no one group will "win", which I guess means each group will get a banner on the anomaly:

[violet cosmos]

lol, complete bullshit

[cosmic anvil]

Weavers will win no doubt 🙃

[timber fox]

Or it is too early for anything to be decided?

[hard stirrup]

It's 99% done...that is not too early.

[gloomy isle]

If this is the galactic atlas then it's bugged

It's not 99% done at all

[dense quartz]

I think the pics from the patch notes show off certain stages of what the thing will look like as it gets built over the course of the expedition.

a unique device with the potential to weaken and defeat the swarm invasion.

I hope this means weekend missions will include the swarm or something going forward!

[hard stirrup]

Well the in-game tracker is vastly more broken...it says 0% progress with 0% from all 3 factions with 55 days 1h and 45 minutes to go....the exact same status as yesterday. The progress is absolutely more than "0%" lol. If anything the website might be showing the actual true progress, because progress isn't 0% and it won't be 55 days before we can continue with phase 3.

[gloomy isle]

No. It's been 99% on there since the expedition started

[hard stirrup]

I just evaluated the Direwasp Disintegrator reward MT and I don't know if you guys are ready to hear this but it is a laughably pathetic multitool...when HG said it was a rifle they were not kidding...a rifle...one of the worst MT types you can have with a damage bonus of up to 20% at S class. I thought to myself "Surely not, or maybe it's a unique rifle that has a damage bonus far higher than normal rifles can have, right? Gotta be something good about it, no way they're just giving us some early game trash, right?" Nope...the Direwasp Disintegrator has a a fixed seed, meaning it will always have the the same stats when upgraded to S class, and it's damage bons is a pathetic 17.3%...it's just garbage.

[midnight saffron]

I really hope not

[distant bronze]

So this expedition is only using two of the large battle scripts, but there's a lot more that are possible in the files with a bunch of other targets that can be attacked. Are the scripts hard coded as only having the hive being the potential attacking force or is there flexibility in what the attacker can be?

Honestly love this system they added, it makes the universe much more dynamic

[somber holly]

minor spoiler so im posting it here, but what is this npc doing?????
https://youtu.be/ZAy8DT04C8Y

[sour fossil]

extracted faction icons from game files, 2 styles

[cosmic anvil]

the first one is literally the Rebel Alliance logo from Star Wars

official collab when 😛

[runic mesa]

Because that's totally the first time HG copied something in all but name. 😛

(cough) Totally not a Stargate portal... (cough)

[molten karma]

The first one reminds more of Marathon or Guilty Spark from Halo

[native carbon]

and that one legally distinct darth vader helmet

[mint lynx]

The swarm got two patches in one morning not even day im quite disappointed that not one ping was a notification it hit switch aha

[vivid island]

That’s what nms does tho, they steal a concept and make it more fun

[cosmic anvil]

I see it more as a reference than stealing ehehe

But seeing Sean openly use the term 'Pokemon-style battle' in the 6.4 announcement was surprising to say the least

Has Nintendo lost their teeth ahaha?

[mint lynx]

"What's Nintendo going to do stab me?" - guy who was stabbed by a Nintendo employee

[vivid island]

I was saying that earlier, there’s prob some executive at Nintendo fuming

[vivid island]

Remember when they would take down anything that even resembled a Nintendo ip?

[cosmic anvil]

they literally went after a small mom-pop store in Costa Rica for having the name Mario

[vivid island]

YouTubers had to talk about Nintendo as if the company was Voldemort

As soon as u say their name ur video is taken down and u get a cease and desist

[vivid island]

Didn’t they lose that case tho?

[cosmic anvil]

yepp they lost hard

any sane judge would have thrown that case out

[vivid island]

I hate how companies go after the most random of problems instead of focusing on the important ones

I feel like we are deviating a lot from the purpose of the channel

[queen oyster]

I was trying to figure out what you actually do with the fallen drones but I just found out you can slap them on a colossus truck bed so im gonna see if you can scrap the parts for nanites

Update: they scrap for ichor

I have no idea what you use ichor for

[safe quarry]

interesting that the anomaly is one, considering we dictate how and when that appears.

oh anomalie(s) as in the discoverable POIs?

[grizzled apex]

Nope, the space anomaly itself

the game currently tracks which systems had their atlas stations destroyed in your save file, so if they make the hive attack the space anomaly at some point I wonder how they'd track that / explain it if at all

[shut hinge]

So, the hive baddies are obviously re-skinned sentinels....but then, Polo says that the Hive is somehow like Atlas, but not Atlas...so it's lore-based, not just recycling models..what is going onn? did Atlas fracture?

[safe quarry]

Now that is super interesting! Persistent galaxy changes for your save file. Could that kind of mechanic be extended to track system allegiances and things like that? or would that bloat the save file too much?

[safe quarry]

Not sure then when this would trigger, other than when u spawn it or come out of it? Which would become more bothersome than interesting.

[gilded girder]

Sentinels are/were part of atlas, the Aeron subroutine. They have access to all parts to monitor and archive, and remove anomalies. So they are simultaneously Atlas and not Atlas.

But Atlas stopped communication with the sentinels, and they've been acting independently. There have been schisms in the hive.

The Hive of Glass appear to be sentinels from the other side (the world of glass), and they seem to be a little upset with Atlas.

[safe quarry]

I was a bit disappointed by the part where it says we escaped the world of glass during this expedition. Only because it looked like any other regular world. I get that thematically it makes sense as its just a data backup of worlds, but it would've been nice if it visualised something like data corruption: a fractal sky, or other visual queues to differentiate it from the normal galaxy.

Also, and this is a minor quibble, I get that the narrative is obtuse by design, but i do wish they didn't always fall back on the Atlas and other machine entities speaking in broken code and enigmatic prophetic language. Even FromSoft speak straight when it comes to their lore snippets, and they're the kings of obtuse storytelling.

[shut hinge]

When you wake up next to the Portal, you mean? before being quickly sucked back to the "hello, world" screen? I'm not sure that's representative of the world of glass. My main clue is that the Portal I woke up beside, had a player base right beside it. So I think we might have visited the world of glass offscreen?

[cosmic anvil]

we're inside the World of Glass?? it looks normal to the outside sim

@hot trout this aligns with lore?

[safe quarry]

I could be wrong, and maybe you're right about it being offscreen?

[cosmic anvil]

I've only completed Phase 1 so I haven't seen it for myself yet 🥶

[safe quarry]

It's a bit jarring, same as the part where you're dragged about a bit in the main story the same way

randomly ending up on some world for a short spell before being sucked up elsewhere and so on

[shut hinge]

I could be wrong too, of course. But the game took me to a Portal on a planet with a player base right in front of it. I would imagine that all the player bases exist only on our side of the world of glass. But maybe in the lore, they exist in the world of glass too

[safe quarry]

that could also just be an oversight that they don't have a 'world of glass' set up properly in the game (yet or ever?) so just used a random planet to represent it, rather than devote resource to making something proper.

[shut hinge]

Yes could also be that

[safe quarry]

But i still hold onto hope that the world of glass is something visually distinct from the proper galaxy!

[shut hinge]

If I had to guess, I'd say it wasn't an oversight, because they're bound to know that people tend to build bases beside Portals, to bookmark them, right? at least, I do.
And that was just some interim step on our way back from the world of glass. Very wishful thinking on my part though, because I'd also like the world of glass to be different

[cosmic anvil]

danngg

[shut hinge]

Are we sure that the planet you re-initialise on isn't the one with the Portal?

[safe quarry]

What would be super cool for the anniversary update of all times, is if the world of glass (being backups of the galaxy) is an earlier iteration of the games procedural generation (or even the first?!) the challenge there is probably that most of the assets have probably been overwritten by the newer models and assets. So while the old terrain code could be injected in, and probably the old colour system too, you couldn't really recreate launch day NMS exactly.
Still, that would be such a bittersweet nostalgic throwback for the 10 year anniversary to have a version of the galaxy you could visit and say to the community: look at where we started, and how far we've come?

[shut hinge]

Could be cool as a cameo appearance. Briefly visiting an earlier iteration of the simulation

[safe quarry]

It would be fun, especially for people with fond memories of where this all started all those years ago ❤️

I think most likely tho, we're about to see an evolution of space content, particularly space battles.

Maybe the realisation of faction territories, and capital to capital space battles that were in the launch trailers but never have actually been realised outside of the pirate dreadnaught.

[cosmic anvil]

No Man's Sky: Backrooms Update

would tie in with the movie perfectly

[safe quarry]

I'm not normally in the crowd calling for big battles and conflict in NMS, but this update feeling like a precursor to the summer update makes me think that's what's coming. And conflict levels in systems already means these additions could be added in a way where they can also be avoided.

Peeps always assume the space station overrides would let them override and own a space station. But what if they're used to override which faction has ownership of a system via its station?

I'm still 'meh!' about factions and combat, but that mechanic could add a lot to tertiary systems, like the trade economy, and other things like that.

[shut hinge]

Very cool how they kept the Hive vs. Atlas reveal a secret in the trailer and patch notes by saying the weapon could destroy something "space-station sized", and I assumed they meant literal Stations but then it turns out to be an Atlas station in that first battle.....genuine awesome moment when the all-knowing space deity gets destroyed

[safe quarry]

I reset my save the first time it got close to being destroyed thinking i had done something wrong and was shooting the wrong part of the hive!

on the second round, it was clear it was meant to be an unwinnable situation ^.^

[shut hinge]

For me it hit the sweet spot of anxiety and panic that my brain has learned to register as "scripted loss" from playing other games

[safe quarry]

I was almost sad when i got up to the bit where it clearly wanted me to repeat the missions for my side, because I was quite enjoying the tight and more focused pace of this expedition.

[distant bronze]

I would love the ability to establish an actual territory in game using the stations as a kind of claim marker

[safe quarry]

Being able to name and expand your empire might be quite neat ^.^ The challenge becomes people claiming community spaces and things like that.

[gilded girder]

Actually it would just be the interface that gets destroyed - perhaps their problem isn't with Atlas, but the travellers.

"Stop introducing anomalies into our perfect universe!"

[vale sun]

Yeah considering the corrupted aeron text when the hive transmits, the traveller is the problem

[safe quarry]

But maybe there's a sweet spot where the empire stuff is all individual to you. Especially after what @grizzled apex said about your save tracking Atlas stations being destroyed. I imagine that's instanced to your version of the game and everyone else will see an intact Atlas. They could do the same sort've instanced trickery with the empire stuff.

[shut hinge]

No I understand it was just the interface in this case, not Atlas itself. It was still cool how they teased the reveal

[cosmic anvil]

fight fight fight

insert Grunkle Stan from Gravity Falls

[gilded girder]

Oh, I see! Yes, it was great 😃

[safe quarry]

Unless there's more to do in 4 weeks than just the hive boss fight (which I don't think there is) the fact that the game tracks destroyed Atlases basically confirms these hives will be sticking around in the normal game mode after the expedition is done.

I guess in the expedition we are fighting a hive of glass, and then more will break through post this one.

[hushed wyvern]

It is explained how it reached our reality?

[distant bronze]

there is kind of a give and take, like, if it shows up on other players maps, than it lights up those community systems for people to see, civs might get more random visitors

[shut hinge]

It could also be that the save file only tracks destroyed Atlases so that you don't encounter one again in the same system, whilst still on the expedition. Right?

[safe quarry]

Could be, but why track all that for the one instanced encounter we have?

especially if its the only one that can be destroyed during the expedition?

there would be no need to track destroyed Atlases plural?

[shut widget]

This can be hotpick from me still I think this update doesn't add much for now.
"Sean we forgive you"
Bro. They add couple of sentinel reskins and some cracked ship with fucked up hitbox

[distant bronze]

maybe theyre looking to use cross referenced player saves to update the map in a region for development consistency?

[safe quarry]

I think realistically, this is some content pulled from the summer update to tide us over until then.

One other thing they could do is rather than factions like that, bring these three factions we now have to the galaxy proper? In the game i play more actively at the moment, there are two opposing sides that play the game to contribute points to their side, and weekly a winner is decided who then gets to vote on a boon for the following week? They could use this system to do something ongoing like that?

[vale sun]

I mean the galacticatlas is being used with this event as well according to the steam post which also hosts player faction stuff it looks like

[safe quarry]

I think bomboi said your faction is tied to your account, not your save, after all.

[vale sun]

Which is weird to me that it's hosting both

[safe quarry]

feels like they could be testing out reception to this idea. and can either shelf it or bring it to the normal save if it goes down well

They say immortalise the winners in the anomaly forever, would have been neater if they brought it to the proper game, and it reflected the current winners each week.

So wasn't just static forever

[distant bronze]

Keeping the three factions going after would be a pretty solid move, though they'd probably have to more officially define them a bit, which of the races and values best fall under them. But i could see player groups and Civs getting behind the ones they think best represents them, could make a station override a function of choosing which faction the station alligns with

[safe quarry]

Mhm, and have different things contribute to the progress. like nexus missions and the like.

Things people can't get around with save edits at least.

Especially if these hive invasions become nexus missions. You could have special nexus missions that count towards faction progress.

The one thing u wouldn't want is like in the game i mentioned, where one side wins it literally all the time

just have some background sneaky balancing where the last winner's contributions are nerfed heavily.

and maybe the victor before that gets another smaller penalty

that way eventually all 3 would have their moment

Just dont tell players, same as they don't tell us the community progress is half smoke and mirrors :p

[distant bronze]

Honestly i want to say, and might be a bit of hopium, that eventually we're going to get the ability to collect freighters, and slot together an invasion fleet, to keep it safe only have it possible on normal mode, and you are dedicating those ships to that attack, result could be a change to the stations alliance association

[safe quarry]

i mean we're almost certainly getting 8 freighter slots

Could be neat if u can send them on away missions same as your frigates?

I am still not sure i see the value in 8 slots for freighters, other than so you can scrap them to salvage freighter parts and customise your forever freighter. However if they let me warp in a fleet of 8 freighters and their 50 frigates. I will forgive them.

[vale sun]

Man I just want to be able to see my friends freighter bases and them to see mine

[safe quarry]

Can you still not? I thought they fixed that?

I have had people visit mine?

takes it a while to load in sometimes

[vale sun]

You can't as of 2 weeks ago when I had a friend try

We waited about 15-20 minutes

[safe quarry]

that's odd. I used to take my friends around on mine, and it took a few mins, but the base did eventually load.

[vale sun]

Then yeah it needs fixed 😭

[safe quarry]

used to be our goto to stay together until the corvettes came out

[vale sun]

I figured it was a feature of the netcode not allowing it because it showed him a default layout

[safe quarry]

hmm mebbe put it on their zendesk? Definitely not how its supposed to be

[vale sun]

Will do thanks for the confirmation 🙏

But yeah as freighters are now I also don't see the point in even 2 of them really much less 8

[safe quarry]

mhm. I think they would need to do more with them, and i suspect they are. Maybe more customisation? and actually using them to combat other capital ships?

[vale sun]

I would like an easier time of getting aesthetic variants of the same type

[distant bronze]

honestly i would venture a guess of it being the latter.

[vale sun]

Like the sizes to the sentinel freighter

And the new hive enemy could actually attack our freighters in a future update now that I think about it

It has a unique warp animation and everything

[safe quarry]

there's things in the code about them doing just that I think ^.^

[vale sun]

Ooo

[runic mesa]

This more and more feels like Singularity 2.0. A teaser or prelude to the next, larger scale update.

[vale sun]

Yeah for sure, I'm excited to see how in depth it goes

[distant bronze]

I am wondering, if eventually the mission radar on corvettes will be synced to the hive swarm missions on the anomaly

[gloomy isle]

Especially since it's 8 weeks long. I don't think there's much in here that would need to take 8 weeks so I think it's filling the gap until release week

For the update

[hot trout]

Somewhat? I was surprised by it, too, but I'm not entirely sure whether the planet was meant to be the world of glass or if it was between, or maybe a combination of the two

The conditions for it are rather unique

[vale sun]

Well do those that get lost in portals end up in the world of glass? Or is that just a glitched subspace

Because if those lost in portals end up there and artemis's logs are a small record of it then artemis believed they were on a planet but the stars kept changing

[gloomy isle]

I think by "escaped the world of glass" it just means we reiterated

Since that's what we basically do every time we respawn

[shut hinge]

That's true. We've been assuming that we entered the world of glass, in order to escape it. But we could have also escaped it in the sense that we successfully reiterated without being pulled into it

In the same sense as "escaped death"

You don't have to die to escape death, you just have to keep on living

[hot trout]

Well... as I mentioned, the particular conditions involved were quite unique

We have never witnessed the destruction of an Atlas Interface

Ive only found one reference to such an event, and I cant recall where I found it

[wild dune]

Base Computer Archive: Something was very wrong. The ATLAS interface had grown still, its orb cold and almost grey. The computers did not respond. Nothing did. It took a few moments before I realised that Laylaps was gone. I was alone.
and then it mentions something like "the family of glass" abducting and hurting Laylaps, and Laylaps eventually bringing the writer and their friends out of the world of glass etc.

This one is the closest I can recall

It is good to see the current story with callbacks to the "old lore" written many many years ago though!

[distant bronze]

I also have to say the writing and custom icons for this expedition with polo and co are really good.

[untold cedar]

These degenerates at Microsoft better get their asses in gear, I'm tired of waiting three extra days for a damn update.

[near forge]

Afaik it happened when first spawn gek attacked one, but I also don‘t remember where that was mentioned.

I even tried looking through both mine and your message history here…and was fully prepared to scold you for not thinking of something so simple^^, but no matter which terms I used, I wasn’t able to find anything 🫠

[hot trout]

I scolded myself, dont worry

I am so mad I didnt think to screenshot it

[near forge]

It‘s ok dear, I‘ve got it, though I had to resort to questionable means…

Anyways, it‘s from a Gek manufacturing facility apparently:

The facility acted as a staging ground for what appears to have been an unprovoked Gek attack against something called an ‘Atlas Interface’.

The logs show that a great deal of material was harvested from the oceans of many worlds. This substance was cross-referenced against data stolen from other species, and then field-tested against this Atlas structure.

The interface was utterly annihilated, as were the attackers. The blast seems to have wiped five star systems from existence. Only this record remains.

[hot trout]

There can only be a few possibilities, and if its one that I think it was, I'll be even more upset

[hot trout]

OH THAT MAKES SENSE

It has always been possible to destroy atlas interfaces, its just really difficult and has massive consequences

[near forge]

Interesting that oceanic materials were used 🧐

But it could also mean, not much…

[hot trout]

I think it has pretty significant meaning

[hard stirrup]

I don't think it's anything we can harvest. A factory would extract from like a hotspot and we aren't finding or using anything special from ocean worlds.

[gloomy isle]

Nanites?

Or trace amounts of Atlantideum or something else adjacent I guess

[hot trout]

Oh I dont think its something we would know how to use

Though you did remind me of how dreams of the deep feels like it describes an oceanic world

[hard stirrup]

It feels like one of those filler side stories that I kinda doubt will amount to much in the future. It's one of many secure facility stories and I suppose HG could do more with it in the future but there are a lot of those in the game and very few, if any, will see any further relevance.

[gloomy isle]

The water has been a big part of the lore so it's probably a reference to that

Most of the water in the galaxy is contaminated with nanites which help spread the void mother's influence

So it would make sense that oceanic materials of some kind would be somewhat useful in destroying an atlas interface

[hard stirrup]

There was something Polo said during the expedition...that the swarm is one aspect of the Atlas purely focused on the player character. And from that old lore from one of the expeditions where the void mother said she would return in stellar multitudes(before the quest with the same name was added, which brought purple systems) she also said she was surprised the Atlas did not care for his children(travelers) any more than he did for hers(Korvax) and that she would protect the next to fall...that seems like it will be the next main story to be added to the game I think...us having a sort of Atlas path type quest for the Void Mother. I wonder if this expedition is supposed to be the precursor to that...our sort of demise at the hands of the Atlas.

[late tusk]

new armor set is really nice pairs well with some other outfit parts. (shoulders seem waaay to bulky for me so i dont use em)

[violet cosmos]

I hate the new chest armor so much. They look like two big balloons tied to my shoulders, lol. And the fact that's it's metallic-looking makes it not work with a lot of other pieces. Shame, because it looks really good otherwise.

[dense quartz]

I love them. They make the player look like Samus lol. In fact the patch notes show her color scheme called "bounty hunter" 😄

[steady robin]

So I'm at the countermeasure part. Do I just have to wait for it to hit 100%?

I see the missions have a 40min CD roughly

[dense quartz]

I think the cooldown is 7 or 8 hours in real time.

[mental socket]

Seems to be a constant rotation of 7h cooldowns globally for everyone yes

[hot trout]

8

[ebon shuttle]

Would expedition plot stuff go here, or elsewhere?

[mental socket]

I guess #nms-expedition or here

[spice gorge]

https://youtu.be/jiVovw7dV4A?si=5pVfv_g5MOp2Rchc

[hot trout]

The AI generated thumbnail makes me not want to watch

[mental socket]

I will simply not. AI is a plague among some nms content creators. Hecking insulting to an artistic masterpiece like NMS

[spice gorge]

It's a hypothetical. I'm glad I watched it.

It doesn't feel like AI authored content - but whatever.

It's poignant.

To me

[dense quartz]

Yeah I couldn't handle Captain Steve's constant use of AI that has nothing to do with the video itself.

[ember widget]

Like the video but what if we as the players are the ones uploaded by Artemis as a test to show living in the system was real and we are defenders of the sental virus to destroy the system.

[glass flare]

wtf, this expedition brought back those trash mobile game cooldown timers again? gross

[ebon spoke]

It's worse than just timers, it's also the community milestone that is required to get to the end of the expedition

every seven hours three missions will appear in the nexus, once you do them you have to wait for the rollover to do the next three. Collectively, the community has to do a massive number before we can do the second half of the last phase

[glass flare]

yeah I heard about the community milestones, I kind of expected that with the teams. but individual timegates on top of that is disgusting

[mental socket]

The climax better be worth the timegating here.

[mint lynx]

The time gating thing better not make it annoying to finish the exp on switch when we get it late lol

[humble kayak]

would it be in poor taste to jokingly say "in sean we trust"

i'm sure HG will patch the cooldowns

or otherwise adjust some things

[sonic moss]

this expedition is so lame and they need to lower the time frame phase 1 and 2 was fun but phase 3 wow really

[mental socket]

I believe we'll speed up significantly once switches and xboxes get the update

[humble kayak]

That too

[distant bronze]

I honestly wish they had corvettes enabled for this, let is do like actual war crew ships for certain missions

[safe quarry]

I think the issue here is that, while it made sense probably from a technical standpoint, this is really an event served through the framework of an expedition, when they should've treated this as its own thing. I get that expeditions really are limited time events, but we've not been trained to see them that way. They're FOMO adventures that we typically have 6 weeks in which to complete them, and so some people get them 'out of the way' sooner so that they don't have to have it hanging over them for the 6 whole weeks. Timegating the experience just contradicts the FOMO urgency of the expedition format.

They'd have been better to have spent the time investing in a way to inject these limited time events into the regular game, and then had the rewards unlocked for everyone at their conclusion, irrespective of involvement.

I'm sure some people would have still been annoyed with the time gating, but i feel if it was just treated as a side distraction in the main galaxy, rather than this unfinished expedition hanging around in people's save files, the reception to the timegating would've been mitigated.

[hot trout]

Im not sure nms is built for a limited time event accessible by persistent saves

[distant bronze]

I'm tentatively of the opinion that while this one will have a permanent team honored in the anomaly, its going to be a returning event, or the model of event will return in probably fairly regularly moving forward, maybe with other factions

Like say a pirate dreadnought version locally tied in with pirate systems

[ebon spoke]

I wouldn't be surprised if going forward weekend missions were tied into a team system like this

[distant bronze]

Pirates, Sentinel freighters, Hive of glass, maybe some form of hostile living freighter, it would make factions seem a bit dynamic.

[ebon spoke]

I'm personally thinking of it less as an expedition, more as a temporary new questline. It makes sense for it to be this way if the August update ends up changing things enough for this story to not fit anymore (like if the Swarm are fully implemented to the game or something to that effect)

Adding a normal questline just to remove it in the next patch would be weird, this way we know in advance that it's only going to be this way for a couple months

[hot trout]

I wonder if theyre hesitant to try a community mission storyline again

[violet cosmos]

This isn't unprecidented, right? Didn't Singularity have something similar? And it worked its way back into the main game.

[ebon spoke]

Yeah it was setup for the Echoes update, with an early teaser of the Autophage

[violet cosmos]

I feel like that one didn't suck. My memory is hazy about the original run.

[distant bronze]

Singularity i recall was a very good expedition

[grizzled apex]

I'm pretty sure it's just a rematch with the Hive of Glass where it's actually beatable

[mint lynx]

People are still mad about time gating? It's been part of NMS since they changed the goal from explore and core jump only

[mental socket]

Fun fact. The moving parts around the central laser are breakable by flying your ship into them. Probably an oversight

[grizzled apex]

The team system is tied to the community missions, so I'm pretty sure they're gonna tie other future events to this type of time gating going forward too, but as a part of the main save file. I'm guessing the expedition is just a bigger, flashier way of conducting it as an introductory update though.

[violet cosmos]

The big black orb things or something else?

[mental socket]

The hive mothership thingy. The ominous indestructible clawed orb yes

[hot trout]

Can confirm, I tried sneaking up on it and accidentally bumped into the indestructible covers

They blew up

[mental socket]

How likely would you see the faction system remaining? Also it's nice how they're showing registered traveler "fragment" counts in the menu. Good way for end user to see the actual number of participants

[grizzled apex]

Contribution goal amounts alongside current contributions. TS is team size while TO is total contributions

This is gonna take a while...

[mental socket]

Am curious to see where those numbers jump when all the platforms get the update.

Especially the player count

[grizzled apex]

Oh its absolutely getting reused imo. The Community Mission system's been the same serverside ever since it launched, this is a pretty big change and probably took a fair bit of testing on the servers.

[mental socket]

Guess it's also safe to assume the fragment/player counter only counts once per player. So one can't possibly manipulate the number by creating multiple expedition saves

Just like you can't manipulate the team

[grizzled apex]

that one's handled up an upstream server so its difficult to check, but since the user team is sent with the account wide authentication sequence, Im guessing not.

[mental socket]

I shall trust those numbers reflect the actual individual players then

[grizzled apex]

Also, I'm a lil suspicious that the team's chosen serverside. Before starting, the server marked my team as red (which could be a default), but I also had an actual in-game team of Royals when I did start

[hot trout]

Hmm

[grizzled apex]

I cant see a server request to actually tell the servers what team a client's on, but ill have to check the exe to make sure

I thought it might be sent along with the actual contribution request but that doesnt seem to be the case

Huh, there's a server field for userCmNextTeam that's unused rn

[mental socket]

Interesting. For reshuffling the teams in the future maybe?

[grizzled apex]

I guess either HG might reshuffle us at some point, or maybe this is early work for a future CM where reshuffling might be active?

[violet cosmos]

I noticed in the expedition config all the defaults were "red," so I wonder if it's similar server side before it's actually set

[grizzled apex]

yea that was my first thought too (and hopefully what's actually happening). I'll try n get a friend who hasnt started the exped yet to run a few tests with the server and see what happens

[mental socket]

Things are looking awfully balanced regarding the progress. Hopefully it doesn't stay artificially flat between all 3

[hot trout]

The differences are too small at this point to show up on a percentage level

[grizzled apex]

oh HG messed up the CM serverside setup a lil lol

itll work fine from a normal player's perspective

but using the API directly I can submit over the 3 mission limit

shouldnt skew the actual results but a zendesk report is due now

[mental socket]

I do wonder if they have some mission reshuffling or other fanciness planned with each construction phase

Whenever the core reaches a new stage

[slow yacht]

are we talking about the expedition?

[mental socket]

Yeah

[slow yacht]

nice

[safe quarry]

I think so too. I chose identical options to a weaver and was given Royal as my team.

[grizzled apex]

I'm still tryna check conclusively on the server but if true, that's pretty disappointing.

[safe quarry]

It kind of makes sense tho for the sake of balance

[grizzled apex]

Also makes me wonder why they made the intro quiz modular and changeable for expeditions like they'd reuse the system later on if it doesn't affect anything

[safe quarry]

as I mentioned, in another game i play where u can actually choose your side, one definitively wins every week. and not even by a small margin

[hot trout]

I still think its multiple factors

[safe quarry]

So its a known thing that whatever side you'd rather pick, its objectively better to pick this one side, as winning gives u a weekly boon as well

[grizzled apex]

If they're planning a reshuffle event, then that could work for auto balancing tbh. Maybe set player caps for that point and let you reroll if the limit's reached when you finish the quiz

[safe quarry]

its probably a weight combination of a few things

[hot trout]

I would guess that the quiz itself does narrow down to a team, but then its weighed against other factors, most likely player distribution

Maybe even relative scores

[hot trout]

Though with the reshuffle mechanic, team scores becoming increasingly different may be what triggers those

[safe quarry]

If they do start implementing a weekly or monthly challenge, i do think they should do some weighting in the back end. A debuff to the previous winner's contributions, maybe a minor debuff to the second to last winner, so eventually the odds stack on everyone getting a moment as the victor.

-50% to contributions for the previous winner, -25% for the winner before that. So if one team manages to win twice in a row, they have a huge -75% debuff that almost guarantees they won't get a third week

Same reason Mario Kart has catchup logic, it's neither fun for the person out in head, or the person miles behind ^.^

[safe quarry]

What is this reshuffle event u mentioned?

I feel whether people were happy or not with what faction they were assigned, they'll eventually grow an attachment to their team. Might be offputting to be reassigned down the line?

Maybe the station overrides will allow u to claim a station for your faction? don't know how you'd contest it or anything like that. But just food for thought?

[deep mountain]

All the new no man's sky youtube videos are just ads summer update gunna be huge

[safe quarry]

I mean there's a lot of pressure on them to deliver with the 10th anniversary

[deep mountain]

Can't watch one normal video rn all ads lmao

[grizzled apex]

Completely unused in the actual server response rn, but the game exe has a JSONReader field expecting that value in the function that parses the server authentication response. Could be used in the future potentially.

[safe quarry]

Sounds like future proofing

[grizzled apex]

Probably. Also important to note that the team system's tied to community missions and not the expedition itself, so it could be for a future non-exped community mission.

[safe quarry]

I do think the hive of glass will probably become a nexus mission in the future. Wouldn't mind the hive to be an ongoing mechanic tied to the faction system specifically, and not the faction system used broadly for all nexus missions. Maybe have some missions that contribute to factions, and others that are just as is.

Just so that if the factions become a persistent thing, that its an optional/opt in competition rather than one that sullies the NMS experience broadly.

[grizzled apex]

That's probably how it'll work going forward. Certain CMs would likely send a single player team with all players assigned to it for contribution, and specific ones would be attached by HG for bigger events

[grizzled apex]

Doesn't seem like both can co-exist for community missions. The active community mission sends its own team sequence setup every time you launch the game.

[safe quarry]

That's a shame.

[grizzled apex]

The number of teams is also hardcoded to 3 atm

As in, the maximum number of teams HG could set up serverside immediately

[safe quarry]

Since its a form of indirect pvp, its not so bad, but just adds a twinge of undue competitive pressure to the relaxed environment of the game, if say every nexus mission contributes to the faction progress.

[grizzled apex]

It can still be shrunk down atm

[ebon spoke]

The team system feels like its missing something to me. I'm on the Royals team but why should I care about the Royals winning? I don't gain anything from my team doing better than the others. If we do come out on top, the new version of the nexus will be red or whatever, but I didn't even pick the red team so I don't have any stake it what colour it ends up being. The system would only feel meaningful if you could pick a team or if the winning team would gain some sort of reward that the losing teams wouldn't get.

As it stands now, it's pretty much just 'pretend to be in competition while doing an otherwise normal community research mission. Also whatever team happens to have the most players on it will determine how the space anomaly looks forever'

[grizzled apex]

It doesn't need to. For normal community missions I assume that HG will set the number of factions down to 1.

[safe quarry]

This is where the game I play now actually has stakes, but at the same time also is skewed by unbalanced teams.

your individual contributions not only can be lent to certain houses to try and win a kind of... 'bingo card' of a grid, trying to get as much of it for your side as possible

[grizzled apex]

I agree that it's pretty superficial atm. Any attachment will form solely from players participating and growing attached to their teams, which don't have any other basis in lore or gameplay. Would be w lil better if the teams were based on something in game, but this feels a lot like a test for more polished implementations later on

[safe quarry]

but individual contributions also gain you voting power for the edicts that come into play

[ebon spoke]

I guess also part of the problem is that the maximum amount you can contribute for your team is so easy that everyone is doing it. Whatever team wins, it will be because they have the most players. Pretty much everyone is doing all three available missions whenever they're on, there's no room for one team to work harder than any other.

[grizzled apex]

Kinda like pioneers for the new system

[safe quarry]

so the winning side gets to pick from 3 boons for the week to follow, and the more you've contributed, the more votes you can cast towards the one u want

[hot trout]

You say that, but it is clearly not true

Royals and sages have nearly the same number of players, yet their scores are different

[safe quarry]

are they wildly different or closely matched tho?

[hot trout]

Depends how you define it

But the difference between purge and sabotage missions is greater for the sages than the royals

[safe quarry]

well you'll have fluctuations depending on the geography of the players for each side and their typical play times.

[hot trout]

I dont think it will be player count that determines the winner, it will be whichever team has the most players who actually do all three missions

[safe quarry]

Also yes I agree that it feels superficial, but more on the teams themselves. I am a royal, but what is a royal? Other than the color red being more regal?

[hot trout]

It was explained when you got the results

[safe quarry]

it was? They just said i was royal because i was a leader and stuff. that's so wrong :p

i am a happy little sheep

[hot trout]

Thats what the fragments are

[deep mountain]

They'll probably just say everyone wins and includes al three colors

[hot trout]

Theyre three aspects of travellers separated

[safe quarry]

oh yes i get that we're fragments of a single persona

[hot trout]

And royals are the part of the soul that is brave, seeks new challenges, claims worlds as theirs, etc

[safe quarry]

But it feels like a very shallow framework for the faction competition.

well i mean okay, being pedantic and just poking the bear a bit here

[hot trout]

I admit, I like the framing of the fragments more than the competition bit

However I do think these three aspects would end up competing with each other due to all three being imbalanced

[safe quarry]

why thematically would it be in our interest to be in competition at all? I mean we are all working towards a shared goal, and in the lore are effectively the same traveller fragmented into 3. Would it not be in our interest in trying to re-unify ourselves?

its a neat idea, but what i mean to say is there's a bit of narrative dissonance between the lore and mechanics

[hot trout]

Because royals are headstrong, weavers are independent, and sages are concerned with universal balance more than personal balance

[safe quarry]

so the short summary is: the travellers are suffering from a physical manifestation of Schizophrenia

[hot trout]

Thats a way of putting it

A rather inaccurate way, but gets the point across

[safe quarry]

I'm kiiind of in two minds about it all.

[hot trout]

Yeah thats exactly it, except its three

[safe quarry]

Because its starting to feel like the lore is working in service of the mechanics than the other way around.

[hot trout]

The gradual introduction of multiplayer was literally written into the lore

[safe quarry]

It's like they added this fragmentation to service the competition. so we're adding more flies into the ointment of the lore, that already has plenty of room already to accomodate this mechanic in the story as served. It's like the lore equivelent of feature creep :p

[safe quarry]

mhm but this was done in a neat and tidy way that worked with the developing lore of the simulation and multiple iterations

[hot trout]

Im somewhat biased towards the lore, so I see the competition thing as more tacked on, lol

[safe quarry]

The two worked in parallel, while this definitely feels like the mechanic came first, and the lore came second

[hot trout]

Im also familiar with the concept via the cosmere

[safe quarry]

It's not that i'm against it perse

its just like... feels like they had a mechanic and went: right we need a lore framework for this... shrug fragmented soul?

like... you have three foundational races, u have the atlantid vs atlas that has already been set up

[hot trout]

I feel like the same thing can be applied the other way around

[safe quarry]

u have the three guilds

plenty of pre-existing foils that could've been used to wrapper this scenario without adding yet another facet to confuse the lore.

[hot trout]

There is more we have yet to see

[safe quarry]

Maybe, and i hope they do more with them tbh

but i have a sneaking suspicion from how they've handled this historically that they will see a new shiny, and drop this toy to scamper after the next one

[hot trout]

I think this will give us more insight into things such as why the remaining races in nms is 3

[grizzled apex]

I feel like Iain Brown is gonna be very mad if they made him change up the CM server just to never use it again lol

[safe quarry]

They could still rescue this by tying it all back neatly yush, time will tell tho if they do

[safe quarry]

oh yes i don't mean mechanically, i mean thematically

because now they have to make room in the main game to cause the schism in our travellers

because rn we are in the 'safety bubble' of the expedition

[hot trout]

Consider that the fragments do not have the traits of their separated counterparts

[safe quarry]

where the fragmented personas can happen without breaking the lore of our normal save

[hot trout]

Oh wait, yeah like when this gets implemented in the main game

[safe quarry]

but to bring it over to the main game, they now have to acknowledge the fragmented traveller identity somehow

[hot trout]

I mean, it happened

And even as unified souls, people will lean towards traits of one of those groups

[safe quarry]

I always saw the expeditions as almost pocket dimensions, inconsequential to the narrative of our main traveller.

But are we now assuming we are also divided in the main timeline?

[hot trout]

I said myself that I personally feel i lean somewhere between sage and weaver

But theres a part of me that wants to claim discoveries as mine, which is definitely part of what the royals represent

[safe quarry]

But okay, playing devils advocate. If i were a new player coming to the game after the expedition, when the lore of the fragmentation is buried

it might be a bit confusing to play through the story, and then be told at some point, that i'm a third of a soul that represents part of the traveller, having that not been served to me at any point in the main narrative?

Its like when peeps play WoW now (like me) and don't know half the backstory because the game skips most of it but acts like I am supposed to know who these people are

[hot trout]

I dont think the fragmented aspect will persist outside the expedition

It would be more like "at one point, there was a war against the hive of glass, and just before it started, all travellers fragmented into three aspects of their souls

[safe quarry]

But if the mechanics are still there, or are introduced into the main game as we think they will be, what will be the raison detre for the three factions existing at all?

[hot trout]

Why assume the factions introduced to the main game will be the same as the ones from the expedition?

Maybe it will be aligned to the guilds instead

Or even teams led by iterations from the Anomaly

[safe quarry]

I feel for a new player, for example, contributing weekly to the korvax, vykeen, or gek... or contributing to the merchants, mercenaries or... the other one... would be something I would immediately understand.

[hot trout]

Yeah, I think it would be something like that, for the main game

[hot trout]

Actually... probably something like this

[safe quarry]

I think they should yes. Because making room for the fragments in the lore is just adding more on top of lore threads we haven't even resolved yet hehe. Like finish what's on your plate first!

[hot trout]

Most expedition lore is rather self-contained while still having implications for the wider universe

Like, Leviathan happening doesnt mean we are doomed to fall in a timeloop

[safe quarry]

oh yes i appreciate that for now the expedition is its own self contained little reality

i just wonder how they will carry this three faction thing forward into the main game, since it seems in the back end its designed to eventually loop back into the main game

[hot trout]

However i dont think this is the case, necessarily

Ultimately, I think the story of your own Traveller is up to you, though

[safe quarry]

❤️

[grizzled apex]

Based on the ending of the expedition, || the prismatic core reforges the 3 split fragments into one, allowing us to defeat the hive, and then be ghosted by the Atlas when we ask it if the Hive is truly gone||

[hot trout]

I have the headcanon that my main save traveller, labeled as my Prime Iteration, can (mostly) access the memories and experiences of all other saves of mine

[grizzled apex]

A bit of an anti climatic ending imo, but definitely setting up the hive appearing in the main universe

[hot trout]

Is that like a gist of it, or the actual ending?

[grizzled apex]

Jist of the final 3 milestones

[hot trout]

Because the way Polo framed it, the prismatic core is supposed to do something that puts the hive back where it is supposed to be

I guess that doesnt necessarily mean the hive is taken care of forever

NMS swarm update: the Atlas gets an autoimmune disease

And just like irl, it cannot be cured, only treated

[grizzled apex]

after the community mission is complete, polo allows us to build this thing, and says:
||It is success, Traveller-Friend! The core is complete, with fragments of all. A very large fragment of %TEAMWINNING%!||

||It is combination of all fragments. Big prism. Transducer. Simple! And I have thought of method to link prism and exosuit! Small lens. Portable. Safe!||

||Lens is safe, yes. But Hive is still dangerous. I do not ask you to try. Lens creates possibility only. Choice belongs to Traveller-Friend.||

||Blueprint is yours, friend. I know you can do it! Reflect Hive. Push it back to glass world!||

After the battle ends, we go talk to the Atlas:

||I feel dwarfed before the interface. The orb spins impassively. Does it even see me here?||
||Something in my words - or my voice - provokes a sudden reaction from the great machine.||
||The silence stretches. The orb spins.||
||Hive protocol... contained <NEWLINE>Boundary test... pass < <NEWLINE>Directive... Iterate Traveller-designate - kzzkkt - contained -kzzktt - iterate - kzzzk - primordial - kzzkktt -||
||HiveArraySize()=18, 446, 744, 073, 709, 551, 616||
||I begin to demand more answers, but I can feel my agency slipping away, feel the push of the interface dismissing me...||

(dialogue options are just the traveller asking what the atlas means and demanding answers)

[hot trout]

...concerning

[grizzled apex]

so Tldr: ||travellers merge back into one lorewise, Hive likely still in the universe (though contained for now) and The Atlas doesnt want to talk about it||

[hot trout]

Wait a minute those ||numbers|| might tie to the arg

[grizzled apex]

That's just the 64-bit ulong limit

[hot trout]

Ohh, the spaces made me think it was a sequence

Wait what

[grizzled apex]

Yea i think its just meant as a shock reveal, ||that the number of hive things are equal to the number of planets||

if not HG just trying to shoehorn the number of planets into odd places.

Wait why the hell did HG set up 5 community mission tiers if the milestone only checks for the last one being completed

[hot trout]

Wait... you mean like for the expedition?

As in specifically the expedition and not regular community research

[grizzled apex]

yea the milestone which tracks the community mission only progresses when the entire CM ends. I don't see it checking the other tiers. I guess those are for "piecewise" assembly of the center piece

[hot trout]

Hmm

It is also possible that they can influence the missions we get

Like higher tiers bring greater difficulty? Or maybe each tier of completion is what triggers that shuffle thing

[dense quartz]

I like how you can see what the core will look like when the game loads and only disappears when you tab into the game window.

[ebon spoke]

I think its colliders are there too

[dense quartz]

Yeah.

[safe quarry]

I guess the mechanic of the factions will just come back with a different theme wrapper then. Or maybe the factions remain but just as a nod to a time when we were once fragmented.

[grizzled apex]

The system's set up to be able to allow HG to add new team icons, names, descriptions and colors later on.

[safe quarry]

Probably overthinking it and they'll just appear same as corvettes did :p

That's neat! Hopefully they'll do more temporary and inventive things with it

It could become another alternative to expeditions as intermediary updates

[grizzled apex]

functionally they'll use the same RGB classifications, but HG could change em around apperance wise, such as setting up 2 teams serverside (say, Atlas and Abyss), set their colours and names to be anything (Crimson and Purple in this case) and let er rip for a CM

[safe quarry]

They definitely need to do something around the Atlas vs Atlantid, because I feel that just got dropped after singularity

[grizzled apex]

They might have to change how the teams are delivered though, rn they only seem to be sent via the expedition file itself

[safe quarry]

I do like the idea of actions within these FOMO events having lasting consequences for the galaxy tho, even if its just a superficial change to the space anomaly this time

I hope that's something they develop on for LNF. I even hope they really put the onerous on us to build out the settlements, towns and cities, that make up LNF's worlds, rather than prepopulating it too much

Take inspiration from the project hub and have LNF have a real history shaped by the players and their actions.

You can effectively have the players make your game world over time, and just hand them a blank slate, the tools and means to make it themselves effectively.

Carve out roads, trade posts, taverns, cities, npc vendors who sell real items players put on for sale. that sort've thing

I feel that's a fantasy that so many games have tried to accomplish, has proven a really popular idea, and HG are uniquely positioned to actuall realise with the framework of NMS even as it stands. All its missing is unifying the playerbase is a more condensed area, and more reliable asset streaming.

and just some ways to better facilitate offline trade.

[wanton path]

Regarding the expedition... I don't think I was prepared to see an Atlas station being destroyed like that. 👀

[safe quarry]

I do also appreciate that's probably a bit of a logistical headache when it comes to making it tamper proof, especially as HG seem to be fairly hands off with players getting to save edit and mod on their own terms.

[cosmic anvil]

Actually I was cheering loll 🤣 got caught up in the hype like the destruction of Alderaan.

[sour fossil]

so the corrupted ichor will be used for the exosuit tech

that and refining, only 2 use cases for it

[molten karma]

Do we have any idea if this leading into anything for the summer anniversary update?

[safe quarry]

Not with any certainty, but I reckon its a pretty solid predication at this point ^.^

I'd said before the release that the timing felt a bit too convenient with the summer update/anniversary on the horizon, and the 2 month lead time of the expedition feels a little too timely.

I would really not be surprised if this is partly content pulled forward from the summer update and packaged into a neat little expedition to build up some momentum to the summer update. the fact that they had streamers involved tells me even moreso the case.

I will say tho, I am surprised they have pretty much put one timegate in for 4 weeks from now. I get that the repeatable missions are supposed to be the ramp up. But I think the better approach would've been to have the usual 5 phases to the expedition, but have each one unlock piecemeal every week. So it felt like a ramp up to the eventual final encounter. I think most people like myself will probably park this now until 4 weeks from now and come back to finish off the expedition. I don't see any real incentive to do the repeatable missions as I have no loyalty to my team (sorry Royals!) nor making the nexus mission hub red forever more. If anything, i kind of hope weavers win, because i think a blue one would look nicer... so i'm actually de-incentivised from getting involved! :p

So for me personally, there won't be any sensation of momentum or buildup, because i wont see the prismatic core being constructed bit by bit, and the whole hive 'war' will be on hold for me until the final encounter drops (that's just me tho, i am sure people like captain steve will milk this daily and do every mission he possibly can!)

equally, unlocking each phase weekly runs the exact same risk of someone parking it until they're all available. So i guess there's no winning :p

Now if the ARG turns out to be real and its unlocks in part tied into the progress of the prismatic core, well that's a different story.

[grizzled apex]

oh huh...

They updated the galactic atlas API to send the entire response that the game servers get

So exact contribution amounts per mission and exact player counts

But none of those are actually reflected in the Galactic Atlas itself

Either we'll get an update, or someone can make a better external tracker really soon.

[sour fossil]

are you talking about this data or something else?

thx Guntie

[grizzled apex]

yep

if you check the API that the galactic atlas pings for this

you'll see that it now returns much more than just percentages

https://galacticatlas-api.nomanssky.com/api/mission/114?platform=merged

in fact it matches what the game recieves from the servers exactly, whereas it used to be limited to just the percentage in the past

[sour fossil]

and that is bad because?

like do we have tools that get borked now because of this new data structure?

[grizzled apex]

I know AssistantNMS' CM tracker is gonna be completely trashed now, and Im not sure if Magicman is available rn to fix it

But it'll be awesome once fixed since we'll have much more granular data for the tracker than just pre-calculated percentages

And it could display the data like in game, instead of how the galactic atlas currently shows it

[sour fossil]

ok so there are tools that used to rely on this API, got it

[safe quarry]

So its not smoke and mirrors? This is a real competition?

curious about the player counts.

[grizzled apex]

There was never a doubt about the actual contributions being tied to players. The only iffy part is whether the personality quiz is affecting team selection or not

Mechanically its driven by the players, same as all commuity expeditions

[safe quarry]

oh i meant more about how the players are divvied up yes

[grizzled apex]

That's still a lil hard to narrow down. I still cant find any way for the game to send a user's team to the server, and all the functions which seem to actually get which team you're assigned to, do so by accessing the game's auth sequence directly every time.

A good test might be someone who hasnt booted the game post-update downloading the expedition file manually, editing the cached team in that file and then starting the game offline to see if they can change teams by editing the file.

[safe quarry]

Well my rant wouldn't post because its long and I am a waffly bean, so must chop it in two!

I'd have framed this expedition a little differently i think. For one I don't think there's any reason to gatekeep the hive as some big buildup event, when it could be used to as much effect selling this as a fully fledged galactic wide invasion if we could encounter multiple. The swarm invasion is galaxy wide, so why only one Hive? We know there's multiple hives coming, so why not now to make this expedition more punchy and incentivise us to do the repeatable missions just to replay the boss fight?

I'd have had the same start, the white screen, the 'hello world', our traveller unsure of where they are, who they are, why they are (more on that later.) waking to find the ominous hive hanging in the sky.
I'd then have it play out the same; have the Atlas destroyed so we understand the weight of the threat, but then instead have Polo insist that this is beyond their means alone. That they'd need the consolidated effort of the three races and the entire galaxy to have a chance of combating the threat.

Phase 2 would then be mostly about convincing each of the races to contribute to the prismatic core, which is a means of shutting off the breach to the world of glass rather than to weaken a single hive. I'm not sure how this would play out, but could be a neat way of highlighting and embellishing each race's lore some more. Korvax will spread the message through the collective consciousness, Vykeens will rally the tribes, Gek will finally pay penance for the actions of the first spawn.

Then you have the third phase as it stands, only with the big hive battles being available every few missions. The hives trying to stall the three races' contributions to the prismatic core, and you opting to help one of the three races (this is how you have your 3 faction competition, but its something people are essentially voting towards with their actions, rather than lumped into.)

Then 4 weeks in when it's complete, you have the final battle, some 'mother hive' or lead ship that once repelled would cause all other hives into a temporary retreat (in theory,) allowing the rift to be closed behind them.

Only when u destroy it, the victory is short lived, as the stars in the skybox around you start to blink out, every one, until you're left flying in a dark empty void of space. No planets, no stars, just u and the one Atlas station you managed to save from destruction. Nothing left to do but converse with that familiar red interface.

SCENARIO SIMULATION NUMBER : 18,446,744,073,709,551,616
RESULTS: //
Hive Destruction: FAILURE
Sentient life remaining: 1
Traveller Entity remaining: 1
Atlas interface remaining: 1
GALAXY STATUS: Non-Existent.

CONCLUSION: // Hive inevitable, failure inevitable, complete galaxy destruction inevitable. Every potential simulation run. No successful combat scenario involving available resources.

ADDENDUM TO PREVIOUS STATEMENT: No successful combat scenario involving //CURRENT// available resources.

TRAVELLER: Its arrival is certain, cannot contain, cannot resist. We need assistance. We need intimate knowledge of //WORLD OF GLASS// entities, We need //HER//

//CLOSING COMBAT SIMULATION// Traveller, you will be returned to the primary simulation. Find //HER// before it finds //US//.

Finding out that the whole expedition was just some scenario simulation the Atlas pulled us into to run, would then allow it to have some galaxy ending consequences, without ruining the galaxy proper. and also would explain the Hives becoming a common occurance in the next update.

WOW, that was way too long >.>

[hard stirrup]

Not sure how it makes sense for this to be a galactic invasion because Polo managed to figure out the Hive is an aspect of the Atlas that very specifically obsesses over the player traveler...sooo why is everything else being attacked? But either way this is a prelude to the next big part of the story where we will work for the Void Mother. I very much suspect this is what has killed so many other travelers and is now coming for us. The Omega expedition lore laid out the groundwork for much of what would follow when the Void Mother said she would return "in stellar multitudes"...she also expressed surprise that the Atlas would permit erasure of his own "children" after she tried to find Leto but could not and she vowed she would "shelter" the next to fall...I think that's us...and what this is. But the Atlas asking us to seek the Void Mother doesn't add up.

[wanton path]

omg i need a recap of the lore... is there any website taking care of this?