No Man's Sky Frontiers Update Adds Procedurally Generated Settlements, Upgraded Base Buildings, and More (2023)

Frontiers is the seventeenth major free update forno man's sky, and is now available on all platforms.

In it, you become the overseer of your own procedurally generated alien settlement. In this position, you make decisions, lead your citizens, develop new structures, and defend your people from Sentinels. You can also take advantage of the base building master overhaul to create your own special base.

The Frontiers update introduced established settlements to the universe, and by finding these communities you can help them "secure their future prosperity and happiness" and eventually develop these initial settlements into cities and even a larger urban area.

If you choose to become a settlement supervisor, you can build new buildings to see your city grow and attract new residents. Citizens need you to solve their problems, make important decisions, keep them safe under Sentinel's radar, and avoid drone strikes.

These settlements can naturally be found through a new quest that takes place after a short post-tutorial progression. They can also be found using maps acquired from the Space Station Cartographer. And procedurally generated planetary settlements can now be found on inhabited planets across the universe.

Patch notes for the update are below and include more information on settlements, changes to base building, notes on visual improvements, information on memory streaming, and also a list of bug fixes.

settlements

• Quest board quests that involve finding NPCs can also lead players to settlements.
• Players can turn in their IDs at the monument in the heart of the settlement. If the citizens accept, they become Settlement Overseers and can choose its name.
• Each settlement and its layout is unique. Each building is procedurally generated using only the available parts to build the player's base.
• Settlement status can be viewed and managed from the central monument. Once players have set up the supervisor's office, they will also be able to manage the deal in their office terminal.
• Settlements have five main stats: productivity, population, happiness, maintenance cost, and sentinel alert level.
• Improve your stats by researching new technologies, attracting new settlers to town, constructing new buildings, setting settlement policies, and much more!
• Settlements that are more productive than upkeep will produce valuable goods for your Overseer to claim. Higher value settlements will produce more valuable goods.
• Deals can go into debt, for example, after the implementation of an expensive new technology. Debts are automatically paid with surplus production. While the settlements are in debt, the superintendent cannot claim the additional proceeds.
• Bonuses for important stats are given in the form of accounting resources.
• Strong strokes will replace weaker ones. Once the deal reaches the resource cap, weaker resources are granted as stat bonuses and do not replace a better resource.
• Over time, the supervisor will be asked to make decisions. A new settler quest has been added to the log to keep track of these requests. This quest alerts Guardians when they are needed.
• Every few hours, the supervisor may be asked to make a decision. They range from greeting strangers and solving crimes to setting settlement policies and investigative objectives.
• These choices will help transform your settlement into a thriving city. However, be sure to monitor the Sentinel alert level. This slowly builds up over time and can trigger an attack on the settlement. The foreman must be ready to defend his people!
• The citizens of the settlement will walk around the city according to their routine. Your mood is affected by the overall happiness of the settlement, as well as your own reactions to your decisions.
• Each colonist can be inspected for information about their current thoughts.
• Other settlers display their thoughts as they roam, allowing the Guardian to get a peek into the inner workings of its citizens.
• Opportunities to select a new building to build will come up frequently. Choose which buildings to prioritize and make your settlement unique.
• Once a decision is taken at the Superintendency terminal, a construction site will be placed in the settlement. Visit the location and deliver resources to build fuel.
• Completing the construction of the building also grants stat bonuses.

base building

• The base build menu has been replaced with a new grid of all available parts.
• The grid allows a quick and easy view of all existing parts and provides quick access to part selection.
• From the grid, players can select a tile to place or go directly to edit mode.
• Players now have quick access to scale, color, material, and rotation options in placement mode.
• In placement mode, players can quickly switch between related tiles or return to the tile grid to select their next building module.
• A new free placement mode has been added. This disables snapping and allows parts to intersect and still place validly. In addition, players can freely place pieces in the air.
• From placement mode or directly from the block grid, players can switch to edit mode and adjust existing blocks. Simply point to the part and select the appropriate option.
• In edit mode, parts can be duplicated for quick design.
• Or get a piece to adjust it before putting it back in place.
• Over 250 new basic building parts have been added, ranging from decorative to structural.
• Three new construction sets have been added: Wood, Stone, and Alloy. While still versatile and easy to purchase, these new sets are more detailed and visually diverse than previous core sets.
• These sets replace the old wood, concrete and metal sets. Older sets are no longer available for study, but remain for existing players.
• Players who have already researched parts from the old sets will receive parts from the new set for free. The new sets are significantly larger, so be sure to visit the Space Anomaly Construction Research Station to explore the complete set.
• The new clothes are context sensitive and will automatically adjust their appearance to their position within a building. For example, walls at the top of a multi-story building can add additional trim at the top, while walls at the bottom can have additional support beams.
• Exocraft Signal Boosters can now place trading posts.
• Fixed an issue that prevented the Galaxy Trade Terminal from being placed on smooth wall tiles.
• The Galactic Trading Terminal no longer requires power to function in player bases.
• Several outdated and unusable core parts have been removed from the tech trees.
• Signal boosters are no longer limited to one per region.

visual improvements

• The space sky has been greatly improved, with new graphics to create nebula effects.
• Visual effects throughout the game have been significantly improved: destruction, environment, combat and much more.
• The mode selection screen has been updated with a new set of community screenshots. Many thanks to all the dedicated No Man's Sky photographers!
• Fixed an issue that caused a single black border while teleporting.
• Fixed several star rendering issues in VR.

save broadcast

• The save/load system has been redesigned.
• On console, each save is now treated as its own item instead of having all five saves together.
• All existing saves were automatically copied.
• Fixed several crashes that could occur when saving or loading long, lengthy saved games.
• The number of possible save slots has been increased from five to fifteen. The save selection screen now supports scrolling to view additional slots/start a new game.
• Doubled the number of discoveries that can be saved locally without uploading.
• All non-consumable Quicksilver rewards, such as items such as emotes and base parts, are no longer slot specific and can be used in all slots after purchase.
• Rewards, titles, and catalog data from saved expeditions are now synced with other saved data in the cloud.
• Multiple users on the same PC and Windows login no longer share expedition rewards, titles or catalog data.

other improvements

• On the discovery screen, the clarity of the button used to record the completion of all creature discoveries on a planet has been improved.
• The reward for discovering all creatures on the planet has increased significantly.
• The clarity of the countdown to the end of the expedition has been improved.
• Season 3 is about to begin and will bring an exciting array of new rewards.

Problems solution

• Fixed several quest issues related to other players detecting target mobs/plants/mines.
• Fixed several issues where matchmaking with players who had their clocks set would cause the Expedition to end early.
• Fixed several issues that could prevent players from landing even if the location was valid.
• Fixed an issue that made it difficult to select the latest dispatch patch with the mouse.
• Fixed an issue that caused text on the Expedition splash screen to overlap in VR.
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to start a new expedition without updating their client to the correct version.
• Fixed various bytebeat and background music mixing issues.
• Fixed an animation issue that could occur when petting a partner immediately before mounting.
• Fixed an issue that caused the collision detection for Biological Horrors to be too small.
• Fixed an issue that prevented jetpack track names from being displayed if they had not been unlocked.
• Fixed several camera issues that could occur when using a planet map on an exoship.
• Fixed an issue that caused some buildings and bases to be incorrectly marked when entering.
• Fixed an issue that allowed players to take danger damage if their threat protection was depleted but they were no longer in active danger.
• Fixed an issue causing some markers to have a “time to go here” guess despite being on a different planet.
• Fixed a rare crash on Xbox that could prevent players from loading the game.