3 ms·

> all without any loading screens It's like Elite: Dangerous or Minecraft. There are all kinds of loading screens, but they're all pretty cleverly hidden. On

> all without any loading screens It's like Elite: Dangerous or Minecraft. There are all kinds of loading screens, but they're all pretty cleverly hidden. On planetary surfaces, you can see chunks load as you drive or fly towards surface features. Every teleport is a loading screen. So is entering and exiting a vehicle, landings and takeoffs, entering/dropping from NMS's equivalent of supercruise, or warping to other systems. My one big gameplay complaint is how lost and directionless I feel in NMS compared to Elite: Dangerous. Like, in Elite I can see a nebula or some other galactic destination and plot a course toward it, settle in and explore an area, and so on. But I never quite feel like I can know where I am or see—at the galactic level—where I'm going. I'm not a huge fan of the spaceflight mechanics, either. And VR in NMS seems completely broken on my brand new gaming machine, which ultimately got me to uninstall it. I feel like I got a lot of entertainment out of my $6 NMS purchase, so none of these criticisms are to say the game is bad. If you've never played it and think you might enjoy a hybrid of Minecraft and Elite: Dangerous, it's the game for you! And I'm very glad to hear the game and the player base are still lively. Great community there, especially with player groups like that taxi service, or various colonies, or resources like the Glyph Exchange. P.S. I have to second the "simultaneously too small and too big" feeling of NMS. Space in both KSP and Elite feels scaled well. Then again, I came to NMS late, so maybe how KSP and Elite do things only feels natural because I played those first.

ryandrake 3y ago
In order to have a realistic, but reasonably playable space game, you need one of 1. Distances compressed, 2. Time compressed, 3. Unrealistic speeds KSP uses [1] (scaled down solar system) and [2] (user-controlled time passage), although [1] can be modded away by using a realistic solar system mod. Elite:Dangerous uses [3] (warp drives). I've never played NMS but it sounds like they use [1] and maybe [3]?
- hedora 3y ago
  Mostly [3], I think. There are a few different levels of plaid speed for the ship's engines. If you want to walk on the ground, it rapidly turns into "this will take days or weeks". Similarly, different levels of implausibly fast mode in the ship remove multiple orders of magnitude from travel time. They may have also used [1] for NMS. I don't think it really matters, given the game play, to be honest.
  - NikkiA 3y ago
    All of the planets are something like 20 km diameter IIRC, so [1] is very much a thing. They're annoyingly big to walk around, but tiny compared to earth's moon.

ryandrake 3y ago

In order to have a realistic, but reasonably playable space game, you need one of 1. Distances compressed, 2. Time compressed, 3. Unrealistic speeds KSP uses [1] (scaled down solar system) and [2] (user-controlled time passage), although [1] can be modded away by using a realistic solar system mod. Elite:Dangerous uses [3] (warp drives). I've never played NMS but it sounds like they use [1] and maybe [3]?

hedora 3y ago
Mostly [3], I think. There are a few different levels of plaid speed for the ship's engines. If you want to walk on the ground, it rapidly turns into "this will take days or weeks". Similarly, different levels of implausibly fast mode in the ship remove multiple orders of magnitude from travel time. They may have also used [1] for NMS. I don't think it really matters, given the game play, to be honest.
- NikkiA 3y ago
  All of the planets are something like 20 km diameter IIRC, so [1] is very much a thing. They're annoyingly big to walk around, but tiny compared to earth's moon.