New to game, planet map?

[AstroCat]

Just got the game with the Next reviews being positive. Is there no way to get a top view map of a planet you are on. Or a list of places you've discovered or anything? Any way to get back to a place you previously found? Thanks.

[TheOrigin]

Dont think in planet size .. think bigger. You are hopping from planet to planet, from system to system later on. Or if you decide - you can play years to explore ONE planet and still you wont finish it because of the size.

[AstroCat]

Interesting, I am just making a base on a planet, I figured I should get to know the area...

[Mr. Bufferlow]

No planet maps- remember it is procedurally generated so that feature would just take too much computing power, assuming it was possible at all.

Best bet is to put down beacons on things you really want to return to. Generally, there is no purpose since there is rarely a scarcity of trading posts and such.

Once you have a base, there may be some things, like portals, that you will want to permanently mark with a beacon because you will visit it often. You can create color coded beacons to help jog your memory of what is there.

Having said that, now that you can build a base anywhere, it would probably be simpler to just build a base near the portal.

[Oku]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

No planet maps- remember it is procedurally generated so that feature would just take too much computing power, assuming it was possible at all.

Best bet is to put down beacons on things you really want to return to. Generally, there is no purpose since there is rarely a scarcity of trading posts and such.

Once you have a base, there may be some things, like portals, that you will want to permanently mark with a beacon because you will visit it often. You can create color coded beacons to help jog your memory of what is there.

Elite Dangerous has planetary maps of it's 1:1 scale planets, so it is possible. Just resource intensive.

[GENERICGAMER]

Originally posted by TheOrigin:

Dont think in planet size .. think bigger. You are hopping from planet to planet, from system to system later on. Or if you decide - you can play years to explore ONE planet and still you wont finish it because of the size.

This is a terrible reply... it says, "Don't play this open-world exploration game the way you want to, play it the *right* way."

There's a planetary exploration mode. There should be tools to support it. If they don't want people to think at that scale, then why have that scale included in the game?

I enjoy the game, but that's silly.

[Hazard0814]

Could just have generic maps with a sphere and "fog of war" with POI shown. and a generic land/sea map.

[Donoghu]

To be honest, it's kinda misleading since there appears to be a somewhat mapping system shown early on when you're scanning for your ship (it zoom out far above and show a bird-view map between your position and the ship including resources icons on the way). Seems like that planetary view is not accessible as a menu. :/

[Kaffeeteria]

When you scan your surroundings with F, press E to set a custom marker. This will help you to find that spot again later.

[GravityWave]

There are (X,Y) coords for each location on the planet in the starship display. That and the compass are the nav tools. Some of it is dealing with spherical vs planar map displays. It is awkward, but that's what is there. X=N/S and Y=E/W from the planets rotation axis (N?). I haven't visited a planets pole yet, but should some iteration. Try 3'rd person views while cruising at low altitude in the ship to get a feel for your location at the base. There is only the one marker however, no stack or multiples. If your serious about a spot, build a beacon. It lets you save there as well. Multi-colors too.

[flick]

Originally posted by GravityWave:

There are (X,Y) coords for each location on the planet in the starship display. That and the compass are the nav tools. Some of it is dealing with spherical vs planar map displays. It is awkward, but that's what is there. X=N/S and Y=E/W from the planets rotation axis (N?). I haven't visited a planets pole yet, but should some iteration. Try 3'rd person views while cruising at low altitude in the ship to get a feel for your location at the base. There is only the one marker however, no stack or multiples. If your serious about a spot, build a beacon. It lets you save there as well. Multi-colors too.

The sky rotates around the poles, yes. If you watch the coords, there's more space between them at the equator than at the poles.

[dnthomps]

I don't think planet mapping needs to be that data intensive. A simple sphere with key points plotted on it would be enough. I would also like to be able to bring this sphere up from the discovery dialog. Early in my game I found a drop pod but didn't have the resources, so had to fly back to my base . I was never able to re-locate that drop pod.

This is level 2 but it would be nice to have the system remember everything you found/built/explored as well as a way to tag by color or rename or even turn it off. Now I have my rover and scanner finding drop pods is no big deal however I now find I re-visit obsolete drop pod sites way too often.

[[OWB] McGrandpa [AGHL]]

Originally posted by sirrobert:

Originally posted by TheOrigin:

Dont think in planet size .. think bigger. You are hopping from planet to planet, from system to system later on. Or if you decide - you can play years to explore ONE planet and still you wont finish it because of the size.

This is a terrible reply... it says, "Don't play this open-world exploration game the way you want to, play it the *right* way."

There's a planetary exploration mode. There should be tools to support it. If they don't want people to think at that scale, then why have that scale included in the game?

I enjoy the game, but that's silly.

So it is June of 2021 and *I* am the No Man's Sky noob. And I agree with you, Sir Robert. Not only have I not found ANY form of a "MAP", I have seen Hello Games LOGS every thing you do and every place you GO. But they do NOT provide US with a way to map these out, and return to them. Unless we put down "The Iron Beacon". I wonder how many of those Navigational Beacons we are allowed to use? I don't see anyone elses, so they are being deleted.
How about all those places we visit that have their own markers? We set those, and the game SAVES it, but for WHAT? If NOT a Map, then WHAT?

[Paprika]

you can put signal booster and have some top view for a while. you can pickup it, put and signal again and again.

[Xenomorph]

I've been playing NMS on and off since release, and i can tell you that the lack of a map was one of the things everyone was talking about back then. However, over the years, i learned that it's really not necessary at all. We have the original means and others that didn't exist back then to mark places of interest.
Heck, if marking a spot you will be going back to so often is that important (i know i needed to years ago when i was poor and there was just multitool mining), build a shack with a solar panel, battery and a teleport or something like that nearby.

[profanicus]

You have a basic idea of where you are on the planet in the discovery screen, where it marks your position on the planet graphic. That and the compass/co-ords and beacons you can place are about all you get.

A planet map is one of the big things new players are surprised not to find, and generally they'll be told:

a) you don't really need one as the scale of the game is galaxies, not individual planets
b) a single planet is mostly all the same everywhere on its surface anyway
c) anything you find and think you need to find again, you will easily find a million of elsewhere
d) deal with it! :)

I guess it's probably a lot of work for HG and they see little benefit. I can't imagine it actually being that hard to do, if (like was mentioned above) you don't have a detailed fog of war, and limit it to maybe just recording a limited number of major objects you tag. It could even be a tech. But it would be a whole new UI thing they'd have to do, for not a lot of benefit. It would be cool though, add to the immersion.