To anyone who's beaten Starfield's main story:

[ChaosBahamut]

Do the UC/FSC plotlines effectively interfere with the Constellation plot? Also, does beating the main story actually BEAT the game (ala Fallout 3 at launch) or can you keep playing after?

[Jaggid Edje]

You can keep playing after finishing the main story, yes.

The game also has a NG+ mode, and you get the choice between just continuing your current playthrough OR starting the NG+. NG+ is a total reset, of everything, including the world, other than your character level and skills and powers.

You lose your items, money, ship, etc., but you do get a few special things for each NG+ cycle. You get a special ship and a special spacesuit, each NG+ after the first continues to make each of those even better, up to the 6th iteration for the ship and the 10th for the spacesuit. You also can continue to rank up the powers, up to 10 ranks on your 9th NG+

All that said, as I originally indicated, NG+ is entirely optional, you can choose to continue the current playthrough after the main story, or at any point during any iterations of NG+

Edit: I can't speak for the UC/FSC plotlines part of your question, because I did not do those during the playthrough where I did the main story. It's a BGS game though, so the most likely answer is "no" they do not interfere. It would be very unlike Bethesda to have side content that interfered with the main story.

[A. Silvermane]

There is next to no interactivity between the UC/FSC storyline and constellations. In fact some characters seem to forgot who you are when there is overlap.

[NegativeZero]

Doing the UC and FSC quest lines do not interfere with the constellation stuff and have very negligible impact on anything.

[Jaggid Edje]

Originally posted by NegativeZero:

No.

When you beat the game it forces you to move onto NG+, calling it a parallel universe.

This is false. It's not only not forced, but it actually explicitly spells out for you how to avoid starting the NG+ in order to just keep playing that playthrough.

[NegativeZero]

Originally posted by Jaggid Edje:

Originally posted by NegativeZero:

No.

When you beat the game it forces you to move onto NG+, calling it a parallel universe.

This is false. It's not only not forced, but it actually explicitly spells out for you how to avoid starting the NG+ in order to just keep playing that playthrough.

Oh, my bad, I forgot that's a thing I guess. The ending was so unremarkable and dull I barely remember anything from it, actually.

[ian26uk]

You question has a already been answered but I would like to suggest to think about what you plan to do at the end. If you want to play NG+ I would suggest you just do the main quest and keep doing NG+ until you are bored or have the power you want because I did everything in my first play through and it feels really bad to lose 100's of hours of play to have to do it all again in NG+.

[ChaosBahamut]

Originally posted by ian26uk:

You question has a already been answered but I would like to suggest to think about what you plan to do at the end. If you want to play NG+ I would suggest you just do the main quest and keep doing NG+ until you are bored or have the power you want because I did everything in my first play through and it feels really bad to lose 100's of hours of play to have to do it all again in NG+.

atm I have no interest in doing NG+ so that's not gonna be a factor.

Thanks everyone. Safe to continue my "♥♥♥♥ around at my own pace" run then. :)