How to Build a Fleet.. and Why..?

[Pantherr]

So I have my first capital ship, and freighter, after killing some pirates. I just recruited/bought (not real sure) a ship and spoke to the captain and now he wants to to buy/saw my freighter with another one, can't I have more than one...?

If not then how do I get a "fleet"..? I am very new to this game and am enjoying it a lot, but there is so much to learn and rather daunting... Any help would really be appreciated as I am not sure what I should be doing..

Thankyou...

[Machete91]

You can only have 1 freighter at all times, whenever you find a freighter somewhere and save it from pirates the captain will ask you to come on board and you get the opportunity to buy it.

Then there are frigates, they are a lot smaller than the freighter, but still big, many may not know but you can actually land on them with your starship. Whenever you see a freighter theres a chance it is escorted by frigates which you can hire, they have a green symbol/marker on your hud/compass if you can hire them. You basically just fly towards them and if youre close enough the frigate will try to communicate with you and you can check out its stats and buy it.

Those frigates then can be sent to do missions, like exploration or mining or whatever and when theyre finished they might bring back some good stuff, like valuable items, units, etc..

[Dirak2012]

You can only have one Freighter, but you can get up to 30 Frigates, you can buy another freighter but it will replace the one you have.

The Freighter is a mobile base and a garage for your ships, they can't be destroyed or damaged, so it's very convenient to have one.
Frigates are used for sending them into mission, which is kind of a browser game, the frigates will disappear for a certain number of real time hours and return with resources, or return damaged and empty handed. To repair them, you must land in each one and repair their systems manually one by one, no crew or automated repairs.

[Pantherr]

Ah ok, so it's the frigates I want then.... Thankyou, it's just if I am gonna send them on missions I assume I need more than one right..?

[TheBoot]

Wow... I could write an entire guide about frigates.
But I don't have to... check out the No Man's Sky wiki.
Here's a link to the Firgate section:
https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/Frigate

When buying a Frigate try to find one that doesn't have any negative traits or only 1 that's relatively small. You don't have to buy every frigate you inspect. One nice thing is that Frigates will improve with experience. The more missions they go on and survive the better they get. That C-class you bought will one day be an S-class if you don't let it get destroyed!

[Pantherr]

Very good to know, thanks. I have been looking at wiki pages but not that one yet, so I will :)

[Gumsk]

The 'Why?" part is the major thing to me. The frigate repair system is so damned annoying that it's just not worth it to do missions, and the frigates are only useful for missions. I guess they look cool?

And for those about to explain to me how to not get damaged, yes, I know if you use better frigates, they aren't as likely to / can't get damaged, and that frigates get better with more missions. That doesn't help early on, though. Like the other thread, they shouldn't have a system that is so damned annoying that you don't want to access that entire part of the game.

Sorry, I'm a little bitter about frigate repair ;)

[GoreTiger]

My question is, What's the actual damage potential that your freighter/frigates do?

Whenever i'm about to come under attack, I'll call my freighter in for support, or my freighter sends one of my combat frigates to back me up, But for all the shooting they do it doesn't seem like they do any real damage.

What would of been nice is if you could manually control the guns on your frigates/freighter during red alerts.

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by GoreTiger:

My question is, What's the actual damage potential that your freighter/frigates do?

They are all almost purely cosmetic, just like npcs "fighting" pirates, unless you step in, there is no damage involved.
Frigates and freighters just shoot to look cool.

[Pantherr]

So what is the issue with damaged freighters..? Only had 1 mission so far, and 2 more happening now that are not finished as yet so no damaged ships yet... What I meant by "why" was what benefit is there of having a fleet and doing these missions...

[Dirak2012]

Originally posted by Pantherr:

So what is the issue with damaged freighters..? Only had 1 mission so far, and 2 more happening now that are not finished as yet so no damaged ships yet... What I meant by "why" was what benefit is there of having a fleet and doing these missions...

The frigates are damaged by random calculations, not real combat. The system check the frigate stats and creates a scenary in which the ships get damaged and give you a cool story are their return.
The benefit is getting credits and some rare materials.

[Gumsk]

I wouldn't mind the random damage if it weren't for how damned annoying it is to repair them.