Day Night Cycle

[MS. Green Label]

What's up with this, it has fastest cycle in any game i ever played, give us some hours of Daylight for gods sake

[MS. Green Label]

hello

[ExpendableGrunt]

I absolutely agree. And now that we have Solar Panels that only work during the day, troubleshooting them is a pain when I don't get enough daytime to work with.

Also, I don't know if it happened before Beyond, but if I reload a save, it sometimes completely changes the time of day. I guess this could be abused to adjust time if you wanted.

[IrisNebula]

The day/night cycle's duration is actually different per system, if it's TOO fast, try moving to another. That said, it is in the realm of minutes to an hour. Really long days, would mean really long nights and being stuck in nighttime is even worse than quick cycles.

As for the other observation, the cycle used to be local so when on multiplayer it could be day for you and night for your groupies which was really stupid, so they made it deterministic, it's now synced to real time and not your local save. Thus, if you reload a game, it doesn't load the in-game time as it was. Even if you pause it, the sun keeps rotating so you are always in sync for when somebody else joins you ;-)

So, you can abuse this but only by pausing the night and waiting for daytime until you unpause, which is not very practical. Also, this is a space game, you can always just fly to the other side of the planet where it's dawn and as soon as it's dusk, circle again so it's always day, don't confine yourselves to your earthly habits ;-)

[ExpendableGrunt]

Thanks for the info, IrisNebula. I never knew day cycle was specific to a given planet. Sucks that the great planet I found for my home base has such a short day.

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by ExpendableGrunt:

Thanks for the info, IrisNebula. I never knew day cycle was specific to a given planet. Sucks that the great planet I found for my home base has such a short day.

Pack up your base and find a power hotspot. Electromagnetic power is infinite power, limited pretty much only by your resources. A single hotspot could power an entire city.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

I am still a little skeptical, but heard a report from a player that some planets may rotate with N/S axis facing the sun. His base never really got dark sky, just a short twilight period.

[Empyreo]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

I am still a little skeptical, but heard a report from a player that some planets may rotate with N/S axis facing the sun. His base never really got dark sky, just a short twilight period.

So fly to the top or bottom of the planet for more sun? But how to know? I had a bugged planet where the sun rose in the east and set in the west and then rose in the west and set in the east. This is when i learned to use markers lol

[IrisNebula]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

I am still a little skeptical, but heard a report from a player that some planets may rotate with N/S axis facing the sun. His base never really got dark sky, just a short twilight period.

I never thought of that, good idea! It has nothing to do with N/S poles though, I think they are irrelevant because of game mechanics. Alright, additional info:

Noticed how in NMS all the planets are so close to each other and they always look static to each other? That's because they are. Each solar system has its planets hardcoded and static in specific coordinates. So, how do you get day/night cycles? Medieval tech: the sun rotates around the system!

Thus, you can stay still in space, look at the sun and observe it's orbit around the planets (sounds so funny) and which part of your favorite planet seems to get shade, discover the actual "pole" according to how the dark side rotates, and build there. Not sure if it's going to work, but I'll give it a go!

Also, since the pole icons are back in the compass since the latest update, we'll have to check, maybe they actually are the poles according to sun rotation in each system.

[goldengoose7]

There is a MOD for that on Nexus Mods/No Man's Sky. You can choose between several cycle length options, starting with 2 real hours of daylight and night. The next option is 4 real hours all the way up to something insane like a real month.

It's listed in the latest Mods for Beyond, so just look through the listings or do a search on the site.

[ChrisF0001]

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Originally posted by ExpendableGrunt:

Thanks for the info, IrisNebula. I never knew day cycle was specific to a given planet. Sucks that the great planet I found for my home base has such a short day.

Pack up your base and find a power hotspot. Electromagnetic power is infinite power, limited pretty much only by your resources. A single hotspot could power an entire city.

I must be doing it wrong then, because I can easily overload a single EM power pylon and have to supplement it with solar panels. I only have one base operating entirely on hotspot power, and that because I set it up between two hotspots so it has two pylons connected. Plus it's on the small side. :)

[mrm6]

Originally posted by MS. Green Label:

hello

nice one! i'm using this

[Suzaku]

Originally posted by ChrisF0001:

Originally posted by Suzaku:

Pack up your base and find a power hotspot. Electromagnetic power is infinite power, limited pretty much only by your resources. A single hotspot could power an entire city.

I must be doing it wrong then, because I can easily overload a single EM power pylon and have to supplement it with solar panels. I only have one base operating entirely on hotspot power, and that because I set it up between two hotspots so it has two pylons connected. Plus it's on the small side. :)

Place more pylons. There's basically no limit to the amount of structures you can place. If you want tons of power, place tons of pylons. If you want tons of resources, place tons of miners and storage containers.

As a wise Judicator Aldaris once said (10 billion times): "You must construct additional pylons."

[IrisNebula]

Originally posted by IrisNebula:

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

I am still a little skeptical, but heard a report from a player that some planets may rotate with N/S axis facing the sun. His base never really got dark sky, just a short twilight period.

I never thought of that, good idea! It has nothing to do with N/S poles though, I think they are irrelevant because of game mechanics. Alright, additional info:

Noticed how in NMS all the planets are so close to each other and they always look static to each other? That's because they are. Each solar system has its planets hardcoded and static in specific coordinates. So, how do you get day/night cycles? Medieval tech: the sun rotates around the system!

Thus, you can stay still in space, look at the sun and observe it's orbit around the planets (sounds so funny) and which part of your favorite planet seems to get shade, discover the actual "pole" according to how the dark side rotates, and build there. Not sure if it's going to work, but I'll give it a go!

Also, since the pole icons are back in the compass since the latest update, we'll have to check, maybe they actually are the poles according to sun rotation in each system.

So, I tried all of the above:

Set foot on a planet, found the North pole, placed a marker so it's also visible from space. The North pole has day and night like a normal point so the sun does not rotate around the N/S axis. I then tried to figure out the sun's orbit and after a bit of trial and error found the actual pole where the sun seems to always rotate horizontally, almost on the horizon, if you are on top of a mountain, it never sets! It's always kind of dusk.

Made a base, placed a solar panel and it still says there is a day night cycle obviously, but since it knows it's always dusk, it operates at 25kPs all the time (half power). So, although you get power constantly, it's half of the max you could and I think it would be better to settle on somewhere a little closer to the equator so you get a big day and small night, full power during the day and half power through some parts of the night (dawn and dusk). You just need some batteries too for the night.

If you do this, remember to place a different colored beacon on each fake pole so that you can see them from space and each ACTUAL pole, so you have your own real compass.