Support us on Patreon to keep GamingOnLinux alive. This ensures all of our main content remains free for everyone. Just good, fresh content! Alternatively, you can donate through PayPal. You can also buy games using our partner links for GOG and Humble Store.
We do often include affiliate links to earn us some pennies. See more here.

God damn this sounds great. No Man's Sky just got another free huge upgrade in update 4.6 "Orbital" that comes with a bunch of big new features.

While No Man's Sky had a lot of ships you could acquire and that was great, the customisation needed a boost and Hello Games have firmly delivered with the option to create a completely custom ship now too. You can also now disassemble starships, to give you components for making those custom starships.

Space stations also went through a huge redesign that improves on every part of them. Not just that, space station interiors are also now procedurally generated giving you lots of different types to explore.

There's also improved screen space reflections, a trade surge system to help you find good deals, fleets of frigates engaged in interstellar expeditions may reach out for help, a station merchant refresh, various space station base parts can now be used for building, various UI improvements like a new main menu, you can now easily swap your primary ship in a space station and lots more.

YouTube Thumbnail
YouTube videos require cookies, you must accept their cookies to view. View cookie preferences.
Accept Cookies & Show   Direct Link

Check out the full update notes. Clearly this is not the last update either, as once again they're saying "more will follow", so I can only imagine what they've got cooking up next.

No Man's Sky is Steam Deck Verified and works great on Desktop Linux with Proton.

You can buy it on:

Humble Store

Steam

Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
13 Likes
About the author -
author picture
I am the owner of GamingOnLinux. After discovering Linux back in the days of Mandrake in 2003, I constantly checked on the progress of Linux until Ubuntu appeared on the scene and it helped me to really love it. You can reach me easily by emailing GamingOnLinux directly. You can also follow my personal adventures on Bluesky.
See more from me
All posts need to follow our rules. For users logged in: please hit the Report Flag icon on any post that breaks the rules or contains illegal / harmful content. Guest readers can email us for any issues.
7 comments

Nezchan Mar 27
Holy crap, FINALLY!

I've been asking for more interesting stations for *years*. They've been consistently the most boring parts of the game, with an "airport waiting room" vibe, and yet you need to visit them in almost every system. The fact that they were identical regardless of the race (why do Vy'keen sit on the same size chairs as Gek, who are a third their height?) got to the point of immersion-breaking.

Improvement of the guilds is just as welcome, given they were functionally nothing more than a source of the occasional free credits and such until now. None of them did anything interesting or characteristic, they just took up a space on that side of the station.

All very welcome changes, as is ship customization. But the station designs are the biggest from my point of view.
CatKiller Mar 27
View PC info
  • Supporter Plus
you can now easily swap your primary ship in a space station
Oh, that was such a pain before.

You'd go to the station to sell a ship, and then it would spawn the ship in the lowest-numbered slot. Which wasn't necessarily the ship that you wanted to fly away, nor the next ship that you wanted to sell. So then you'd have to schlep out to your freighter just to swap ships, and then potentially fly right back.
akselmo Mar 27
Makes me happy to see this game still gets updates.
drjoms Mar 27
Ship customization was mainly reason why i was playing Starfield. Well and better graphics really.
But all in all, time to give No man sky a second go.
Yeah OK, I'm reinstalling it after a *very* long time.

I had enjoyed it even in its barren initial launch state; & in the meantime I got a taste of Minecraft as well -- which I like a lot. Now that NMS is a lot more 'minecrafty', I'm curious how the base building aspect works. Though I suppose there's no analogue to 'redstone' in NMS now, is there?
Nezchan Mar 27
Yeah OK, I'm reinstalling it after a *very* long time.

I had enjoyed it even in its barren initial launch state; & in the meantime I got a taste of Minecraft as well -- which I like a lot. Now that NMS is a lot more 'minecrafty', I'm curious how the base building aspect works. Though I suppose there's no analogue to 'redstone' in NMS now, is there?

There's some electrical stuff you can do, but it's pretty minimal. Building is kind of a cross between Subnautica and Valheim, if that makes sense. You have a system of modules (round room, square room, greenhouse module, etc.) and you also have a system of placing walls and floors and roof pieces and suchlike, with three different materials (wood, stone and metal). You have to kinda run your own wiring to power stuff in the latter version, whereas with the modules everything is hooked up to each other and you just have to supply power and batteries.
Nezchan Mar 27
Just logged in to take a look at the new stations, and yeah, they're quite different from the old ones. It gives more of an "active" feeling, where the aliens look like they're moving around on various errands, rather than just standing around in a nondescript waiting area full of unused seating.

Same layout for each, but the colour schemes and assorted decorations change, which is still miles better than the original design.

It was really nice to see they put the trade terminal next to the teleporter. That'll save headaches for a lot of folks.
While you're here, please consider supporting GamingOnLinux on:

Reward Tiers: Patreon. Plain Donations: PayPal.

This ensures all of our main content remains totally free for everyone! Patreon supporters can also remove all adverts and sponsors! Supporting us helps bring good, fresh content. Without your continued support, we simply could not continue!

You can find even more ways to support us on this dedicated page any time. If you already are, thank you!
Login / Register