Construction Tips

[Rexxer]

This post is mostly for anyone just starting out and intends to list a few peculiarities of the game’s construction system. I am sure there will be plenty of things others have found as well, so feel free to add. Also, since the whole issue of extending the base beyond the initial 300 u up to 1000 u has been covered a lot already, I am focusing on something I haven’t seen much in STEAM discussions.

My focus in this post will be on using three important concepts in the NMS construction system to achieve some useful and desirable object placements:

(1) Build Order
(2) Material proportions
(3) A few examples of glitching

“Glitching” just refers to using quirky build order rules to accomplish positioning of some item(s), but it also may imply some objects have collisions partially turned off which allows parts of one item to be embedded in others, or even some coding quirk that permits doing something in one instance and not in the most intuitive way. For example, a trade terminal applied outside a cuboid, or cuboid internal stairs being placed outside the cuboid, or a supply depot placed in a way which otherwise would not be able to be positioned directly or intuitively. The coding quirks are considered exploits, like a wire glitch, but the collision glitching seems intentional, possibly to allow greater flexibility with the construction. I am focusing here mostly on collision glitching: where items partially phase into each other like “The Pegasus” phased into an asteroid in Star Trek S07E12 The Next Generation.

Build Order

Anyone playing around with the various construction materials quickly finds that sometimes you have to build things in a particular order to get the desired result. For example, to place a supply depot, you either have to place it on the ground or build a platform to place it on. But then, after it has been placed, you can remove the ground or platform and it will hang midair like something out of Minecraft.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2123424918
Build order is perhaps more important when remodeling bases because if you have glitched items, removing one item often creates an unexpected collision of items which prevents the item from being replaced or upgraded. Even normally attached items will often prevent future expansion, for example a wire attached to a cuboid room wall prevents additions of other cuboids or objects on that side. In the screenshots below, I show a floor panel cannot be glitched (merged or phased) onto an object like a supply depot, but the object, like a depot, can be glitched to it. So if you need to remove a floor panel in the future, you will have to also replace the storage depot, potentially a big hassle. That’s just the way No Man’s Sky is built. So you need to remember these quirks.

For the rest of the post I’ll focus on automatic ways to glitch depots to floors so they can be accessed inside the base without lugging the whole supply depot inside, - a definite creature comfort on severe weather planets. But the first example below shows the most intuitive arrangement does not work in No Man’s Sky. Of course.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130523243

Proportions

But first a quick note about material proportions. As most players have noticed in base construction, there are three frequently used building menus:
(1) Basic Materials
(2) Large Structures
(3) Small Structures (cuboids)
But as many know, although large structure corridors can snap to basic materials and cuboids, cuboids don’t easily mix with basic materials directly, since they are of different sizes and don’t snap together. This is mostly due to the fact that floor panels are a bit wider than cuboids, but wall panels are a little shorter than cuboids. However, their different proportions can be an advantage, creating an internal method of measuring distances for items.
The following diagram summarizes the differences of wall height and floor panel widths to the dimensions of cuboids. The actual proportions are slightly different than stated, as the width of cuboids to floor panels is actually more like 5.1 to 4, but for most construction purposes, rounding off to 5:4 works fine. Similarly the vertical proportion ratio is also slightly different, but not by enough to worry about.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130530185

Glitch Solutions for Adding Supply Depots to Floors

Of course anyone can figure out how to glitch a depot to a floor, maybe modifying the terrain like a sculptor, carefully lifting or subtracting height until the depot glitches just perfectly. That can be done in most cases, but it is slow and tedious. In this post, I simply want to have the natural dimensions of the building materials themselves provide an automatic height adjustment. Once you know it, building a fully functioning mining base without bulky indoor supply depots is a snap.

The first solution is just to fix the lack of access to the supply depot in the earlier screenshot montage, in the case of a 2 panel high basic material level. The depot fits between floors, but can’t be accessed inside. The following screenshot montage shows how the first 2 panel level height can be tweaked to work:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130538730

However when the supply depot sticks into the base so far, it creates an object on the floor, so you can trip over it. It also isn’t the most subtle solution, taking up a bit of space. But it’s still better than having the entire supply depot inside the base, and it doesn’t block the views, if you have any. Here’s another summary of what I’ll call Glitch Solution #1:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130545479

The second solution looks much better, and also automatically creates a new possibility: having a vertically arranged organization of depots so there is (1) a presentation layer and (2) the bulk storage layer. Separating these two functions is critical since when depots are placed closely together, they leak into one another. And if you are presenting 5 different resources inside your base, if different resources are accidentally mixed by this leakage quirk, then none of the depost will work. This leakage quirk or proximity effect is also present when wiring too, which is very useful: closely spaced industrial lights don’t need to be separately wired. (Of course in cuboids, you don’t need separate wiring. It’s a plus though for basic materials). Here’s a screenshot montage of the automatic supply depot glitch solution #2:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130548812

Note you can also tuck the depots under storage containers or against walls and windows to make them even less obtrusive. That way you can fully populate the floor with other objects like a refiner or battery.

The third solution looks the best, but since it is basically an all-cuboid solution, you’d have to make a lot of glass. That’s a bit too grindy for me. So I usually just use the 2nd solution since it is fast to build. The third solution also shows how far the antenna needs to be into the interior space to be able to access the depot. With this solution, the depot has zero effect on walking over it, it is for all purposes not there except when you need to get something out of it. The antenna just marks the spot:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2130553743
Note: in all the different solutions, the floors and spacers used to position the supply depot can all be deleted after positioning. I only leave them in the screenshots to show how it was done.

Wire Glitching

This also has been covered a lot, so I won’t go into it much other than to say I read it works better on console controllers because they more easily juggle one build menu off of another faster. On the PC it is excruciatingly tedious, so much so, the people who use it a lot have written macros to automate the process. I am not considering methods that go too far beyond what the plain vanilla game will do. This is one of them. But it is very effective if done properly and your are using a controller. It’s just hard to do on a PC. I’ve tried it a few times but I find it too tedious to do since I tend to build many bases and do so rapidly.

Overplanting

The biodomes initially seem to be rather limited, because whenever you put a door or corridor on it, it wipes out planting access to 3 of the planting zones in the dome. Again, this is where build order is critical. If corridors block planting, plant without corridors, then add them later.

If you run around to plant your crops *after* connecting your domes to plant, you will end up with a pathetic yield amount, under 2000 unit at best. Additionally, the individual planting rings or zones can glitch in different planting angles to allow more than one plant to be planted in each planting spot, ie. “overplanting”. By planting the dome without any door or access present, PLUS using overplanting, you can get many thousands of plants per harvest which makes making many domes unnecessary. To overplant, however, you must keep the dome powered, and I do that by wiring each dome separately:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2123427800
That way when you remove the corridor or door to overplant, the process isn’t stalled out by having no power. You can overplant inside the dome or outside, but I find I have more success using the construction camera outside the dome. When you overplant, you will see multiple versions of the plant at slightly different angles in the planter, but the overall impression is that it is not that crowded…only slightly more cluttered visually than when you have just one plant per ring. After you overplant, you can reconnect the domes to create a raceway that facilitates you running through from beginning to end without backtracking. Just hit each central display panel as you run through and you will have 3000+ yield per dome.

Post below if you have your own construction tips you’d like to share.

[Rexxer]

Another useful tip is using electrical wire as a "tape measure". Since teleporter cable, electrical wire, and supply pipe all max out at 200 u segments, and since electrical wire has no cost and is easy to snap to, I will stretch out electrical wire like a tape to find the maximal point short range teleporter cable will stretch. That way if I am chaining together teleporters to go out 1000 u, for example, I will do so with the least number of teleporter way stations since they will all be exactly 200 u apart.

[Rexxer]

Time proportions: I just saw a video on YouTube titled, "5.2k/40 min jam doughnuts". That's not very good. A large abandoned building can be harvested of larval cores in about 10 minutes, yielding 20 or 21 cores. At 250 nanites per core, that means in 10 mins you get the same amount as making jam doughnuts. In short, the nanite farm available to you at the *very start* of the game is nearly 4 times faster than cooking. And that doesn't include all the time you spend getting salvage data for the blueprints and then setting up your farm base.

[Rexxer]

Last year when Beyond dropped, I started with this floor glitch:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1863769372
This shows the maximum amount the supply depot can enter a cuboid without causing any obstruction to walking within the cuboid. There is no easy automatic way to hit this glitch level though, the closest being the "Glitch Solution #3" which is hidden even more. This one was done the hard way: adding and subtracting terrain until the depot glitched in just right. I wouldn't recommend doing this manually like that. Wastes a lot of time.

[Rexxer]

I see so many new questions about base extension, I made a graphic to illustrate the concept:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2131892753

[Rexxer]

Connecting Biodomes Directly (Saves space)

The connection method of a cuboid *directly* to a biodome is not that intuitive. If you just place a cuboid next to the dome, there is no connecton. If you just place a single door, again there is no connection. However, if you stand in the cuboid and place a door facing out, then carefully orient a second door on the biodome (from your position in the cuboid), they will connect. The door can be a regular door or holo door. Illustrated below:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2133717288

As you can see in the background, you could also just use a corridor as an intermediary, but it would break the line of a cuboid structure, ...it doesn't look as good and a corridor wastes space as you can't mount some equipment in it: it's only for passing.

[Rexxer]

This direct connection of biodomes can be infinitely extended by using cuboids as scaffolding to position each biodome exactly 4 cuboids away so they are directly connectable:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2133730821
This is easy to do since CUBOIDS SNAP TO THE BOTTOM OF BIODOMES.
However note: DIRECT CONNECTION OF BIODOMES DOES NOT PROVIDE POWER TO THE DOMES. The solution is just use the external power connection points to power each dome separately.

After the biodomes are connected in the proper position, you can delete the cuboid scaffolding, - which is a good idea since a cuboid under a biodome opens up a hole in the floor of the biodome. A hole in the floor of the biodome is not a great idea if you want to run through hitting the upper display panel....you reach up and then fall through the hole in the floor. Believe me, just use the cuboids beneath the biodomes for positioning the biodomes...detritus to be swept away once your masterpiece of latticed domes is complete.

Another possible issue is that when you want to overplant each biodome, (plant more plants than there are planting rings), you will have to delete and replace two doors per connection rather than just deleting and replacing one corridor.

[Rexxer]

Here is a more descriptive illustration of Overplanting:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2133791350

[Rexxer]

And the latest summary of how the overplanting is activated:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2146307825

[NoWhereMan]

Thanks Rexxer very useful bookmarked.

[Rexxer]

If you ever Portal somewhere and just have to build a base, there is a way. Here is a summary on what discoverable, or "wild", base computers look like:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2150383164

[Rexxer]

If you want to pass hotspot locations from one player to another, I have a method that is fairly easy. In this example I use the planetary Portal as a center, but you could just as easily use a beacon placed on the terrain. However, if you use a beacon rather than the Portal as a reference point, just be sure to write down the coordinates of that one spot. It won't hurt to take a snapshot also for fine positioning detail for the beacon, either.

I use a polar coordinate map primarily because the x,y coordinates are somewhat clumsy to use for multiple objects in a small area as they can have both positive and negative numbers and it's harder to orient to. Just place an object down as a center point then survey away. After you have all your hotspots, then go back to the center and plot out the spots since you have both relative angle (which you can eyeball), and distance from that one point, (survey markers provide distance). Maps like this are also useful if you want to position your base so you have access to all 5 planetary resources from the same base, in which case positioning is almost always critical:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2123429470
And here's a template if you want to try it yourself:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2162623487