Frigate Trait Priorities & Tips to Avoid Buying "Lemons"

[tarnuts]

When I first jumped into the world of buying frigates and sending them on expeditions, I didn't really know what I was doing - only later I realized that I could have spent my money much better! After several days of trial and error punctuated by squinting at my spreadsheet, now it's making sense. In hindsight, I probably wasted at least 20 million units on ships I probably wouldn't have purchased knowing what I know now. In this guide, I hope to share some of my insights to help others avoid making similar costly mistakes!

Basic Considerations for Beginners:

Frigates come in five types (Combat, Exploration, Industrial, Merchant, Support), and each has up to five slots for traits that either buff or debuff your ship's stats and abilities. Frigates are deployed in groups of up to five ships, with 4 types of Specialty missions and "General" missions. Speciality missions should include 2-4 good ships of that specialty type and a Support ship (to reduce fuel costs), while General missions should include a mix of one of each of the four specialty types and one Support ship (again to reduce fuel costs).

Each of the first four ship types has a specialty role, and always uses the first of their five avalable Trait slots to give a +15 boost to their primary role (Combat for Combat, Exploration for Exploration, etc). Support Frigates do not get a +15 boost to a specialty stat, but instead always start with a -15 expedition fuel cost (i.e. their "specialty role" is supporting other ships in their specialty roles!) More on Fuel Costs below...

To cover all possible mission types, you will want at least 4-5 of each specialty ship type (perhaps as many as 10) and 5 good support ships (it appears you can have as many as five missions running simultaneously). This will allow you to assign two specialty fleets of the same type if you get doubles of that type, and still have a few of each type left over to put together a diverse fleet for a General mission. You may also want to have a good Combat Frigate or two to stay with your Freighter, as they will help you if you get attacked while you're in the system where your Freighter is.

Fuel Cost

Each frigate has a base fuel cost rating expressed in tons of fuel used per 250 LY traveled (this stat is not shown in the fleet management spreadsheet, but visible when purchasing / inspecting an individual ship). Most frigates have a base fuel rating of 8-12 per 250 LY; Support ships have a base fuel rating of 2-5 per 250 LY. All other stats being equal, frigates with lower (more efficient) base fuel ratings are more desirable, as it will take less time mining Tritium and Dihydrogen to fuel them.

Easy Method for Tracking Fuel Costs: Since base fuel cost for each ship is not shown on the fleet management spreadsheet, I like to put this number in my ship's prefix while renaming ships. Likewise, I like to put a ship's total Fuel Cost reduction traits and Speed % buff (if any) in the name in parentheses. This convention makes it easy to calculate the total fuel cost per 250 LY for a given task force while assigning ships to missions. I can pick efficient ships, know the total fuel cost of the expedition, and assign an appropriate Support ship to offset the total fuel costs. Likewise, I can easily identify my ships that have speed buffs to assign to long-term missions and shave time off the voyage.

Traits (see "Frigate Traits" at https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/):

Exclusive Speciality Traits: Ships of the different types have access to different traits - importantly, specialty ships have access to high-powered traits exclusive to their specialty, that can give up to +6 towards their primary stat (there are also two exclusive +4 buffs and two +2 buffs available to specialty ships for their primary traits). For example, a Combat ship can have a Cloaking Device and/or Tremendous Cannons which each give a +6 to Combat, the highest possible stat bonus.

"Off-Class" Traits: Ships of a given specialty sometimes come with beneficial traits that buff "off-stats": for example, a Combat Frigate might have Robot Butlers (+3 Trading). Interestingly, for Combat traits, the highest off-class buff a non-Combat ship can get is +4 (and each ship type only has access to one +4 Combat trait). Other off-class traits (Exploration, Industry, Trade) available to other ships max out at +3 each, but there are two traits available for each cross-class specialty (so a Combat Frigate could have Robot Butlers and a Well-Groomed Crew for two +3 Trading buffs, but no +4 Trading buff is available).

Beneficial Fuel Cost Traits: While all Support ships start with a base -15 Fuel Cost trait, these ships also get exclusive access to the best Fuel Cost traits (two each of -9, -6, and -3). Other types of Frigates can have traits that reduce fuel costs (-2, -4 or -6 per trait) as well. Ideally, you'll want a Support ship to have low base fuel cost (ideally 2), and several high-value (-9 or -6) Fuel Cost traits (theoretical maximum = net fuel cost reduction of 43!). An excellent Support ship with lots of beneficial Fuel Cost traits assigned to an efficient specialty fleet makes for inexpensive voyages!

On the other hand... don't let a positive fuel cost trait blind you to a gas guzzler! Remember to also compare it versus the ship's base fuel cost! A Frigate with a 12 base fuel cost and a -4 fuel efficiency trait is worse than a Frigate with an 8 base fuel cost and no fuel cost trait - the slot used to offset the poor "gas mileage" could be filled with a useful trait instead!

Other Utility Traits: Other than Fuel Cost, there are two general types of utility traits - Speed % and Damage Reduction). Speed % buffs run from 1-3% and are good for all ship types, but mostly useful for long-term voyages where they will be more effective! For example, a fleet with a total of 15% in speed buffs will shave 9 minutes off each hour of mission time, so a 10-hour mission will be reduced to 8.5 hours. Damage reduction is less important if you're sending well-prepared expeditions (1-2 stars above mission rating).

Negative Traits / Debuffs: A frigate can have four negative traits: these traits fill up one of a ship's four trait slots, and are shown in red color (and indicated by a red bubble in the Fleet Management spreadsheet). They will eventually go away as a ship levels up, but should be avoided when selecting ships to recruit for your fleet. IMO, the worst negative traits are those that interfere with the ship's primary stats or make it less fuel efficient!

Building a Fleet

Recruiting Raw Talent: Most recruitable frigates you encounter will be C or maybe B-class, which will have perhaps 1 or 2 buff traits and 1 or 2 debuff traits (which will be eventually outgrown and replaced with buffs), with the other slots open. An excellent and relatively inexpensive "diamond in the rough" would be a C-class ship with its first trait in a +6 for its primary role (or -9 Fuel Cost if a Support ship) and three empty slots to grow into (or perhaps a negative trait with a debuff that doesn't matter to the class of the ship). Of course, a ship with two really good traits already locked in is even better...

How to Know if an A-or-S-class Frigate is Worth It: S-class Frigates can cost up to 9 million units apiece! To be worth the expense, an ideal S-class Combat, Exploration, Industrial, or Trading frigate should have its traits in high-end buffs for its specialty (preferably both +6's), low base fuel cost, no (or irrelevant) debuffs, no buffs wasted on "off stats", and possibly one or more good utility traits like Speed % or a -6 Fuel Cost.

Examples:

A perfect S-class Combat frigate would have +15/+6/+6 Combat stats, +3% Speed, -6 Fuel Cost (or a 2nd 3% Speed trait!), and a base Fuel cost of 8, giving +27 points of bonuses to Combat ability and reducing mission time by 3% at a total cost of 2 tons of fuel per 250 LY.

A perfect S-class Support frigate would have -15/-9/-9 Fuel Cost stats and two 3% Speed traits, and a base Fuel cost of 2. This would reduce a given fleet's total fuel costs by -31 tons of fuel per 250 LY and speed up missions by 6%. Alternately, an all-fuel cost buff Support frigate could have -15/-9/-9/-6/-6 and 2 base fuel cost for a maximum possible total fleet fuel reduction of -43 per 250 LY!

Avoiding Lemons: A "lemon" of a Frigate is a frigate that is already leveled up (B-to-S class) and has weak or useless buff traits paired with a high fuel cost. For example, a "Combat" ship with 12 base fuel cost, either no Combat traits after the initial +15 (or weak Combat traits), other traits wasted on off-stats like Trading or Industry, and possibly even debuffs (worst type = those undermining its primary role or adding fuel costs!!!). You should avoid wasting your money on ships with no more room to grow, especially if it already grew in the wrong direction!

Culling the Flock: As your ships level up, losing bad traits and gaining good ones (and as you acquire new ships), you'll find that some are more useful than others, or even that some of your ships have grown up into "lemons". Unfortunately, you can't assign positive traits to be stripped out as if they were negative and "re-rolled" on level up for a random new trait which may be better. As such, if you wind up with a "Lemon" either due to an unwise purchase or simple bad luck leveling up, if it's already leveled up, it's stuck that way and cannot be improved thereafter. If you have something better, and you don't use that frigate, get rid of it! You may not have to pay upkeep on it, but if it's just taking up space now, why keep it?

In any case, that's all I have for now. Best of luck recruiting your fleets, travelers!

PS: This post would not have been possible without the help of the folks at the No Man's Sky Wiki - much respect!

https://nomanssky.gamepedia.com/

[Shaman-Ra]

What's this Game Guide doing over here in the forum ... <ah'em>

[MonkeyGamesVR]

Originally posted by Shaman-Ra:

What's this Game Guide doing over here in the forum ... <ah'em>

Someone who got bored af and thought, u know whot, me gonna write a gameguide on this forum to kill time untill dinner is ready

[tarnuts]

Originally posted by MonkeyGamesVR:

Originally posted by Shaman-Ra:

What's this Game Guide doing over here in the forum ... <ah'em>

Someone who got bored af and thought, u know whot, me gonna write a gameguide on this forum to kill time untill dinner is ready

Yep that's about the size of it - now that you mention it, though, I'll post it where it should be!

[MonkeyGamesVR]

Originally posted by tarnuts:

Originally posted by MonkeyGamesVR:

Someone who got bored af and thought, u know whot, me gonna write a gameguide on this forum to kill time untill dinner is ready

Yep that's about the size of it - now that you mention it, though, I'll post it where it should be!

But dinner first K?

[tarnuts]

Originally posted by MonkeyGamesVR:

Originally posted by tarnuts:

Yep that's about the size of it - now that you mention it, though, I'll post it where it should be!

But dinner first K?

You wanna help me eat up some leftover BBQ and the massive pile of potato salad, hollah at yer boy!

[SigmaLance]

This is epic. Much thanks!

[tarnuts]

Originally posted by SigmaLance:

This is epic. Much thanks!

Thank you SigmaLance! I've posted an updated version here if you're interested - cleaned up and added a few tweaks. If you have any suggestions, please let me know!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1505175794

[clannagh]

Good stuff.

One minor point. You can have more than 5 fleets out if you have enough command rooms.

A typical example is where one or two fleets are still out from the previous days mission (some missions are 28 or more hours) and you are offered 5 new missions. If you have enough command rooms you can send out the five new fleets while the old ones are still out from the previous day.

On the subject of fuel costs .. if you send out all support ships it costs no fuel at all :D

[Raysonlws]

nice post, it should be go to the guide thread

[tarnuts]

Originally posted by Raysonlws:

nice post, it should be go to the guide thread

Thanks Raysonlws!

Since it was first suggested, I've been actually building a guide in this vein over on the Guides section - I've added a bunch of additional content, and will add some more as I've refined my understanding re: how the stats work on Frigates.

Please take a look and comment with any suggestions!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1505175794

[tarnuts]

Originally posted by clannagh:

Good stuff.

One minor point. You can have more than 5 fleets out if you have enough command rooms.

A typical example is where one or two fleets are still out from the previous days mission (some missions are 28 or more hours) and you are offered 5 new missions. If you have enough command rooms you can send out the five new fleets while the old ones are still out from the previous day.

On the subject of fuel costs .. if you send out all support ships it costs no fuel at all :D

Thanks clannagh!

With your permission, will include that suggestion re: using more than 5 Command Rooms to manage missions across multiple days. Haven't gotten quite enough super long-term missions in one go to fill quite that many, but seven or eight might not be a terrible idea!

Re: fuel costs / all supply = no cost... I swear there's some weird mechanics in fuel costs.

Example: combat mission, 3 stars, 1,578 LY (7 increments of 250), 9h 25m. Send x3 Combat with fuel costs 9, 8 and 8 (4 stars rating BTW) with a Support with 2 fuel cost and -27 fuel reduction. Total fleet fuel cost = 9+8+8+2 = 27, fuel redux = 27... should be zero, right? Nope! 150 tons.

Throw on another Combat ship with a 10 fuel cost and make it 37 / -27 (and get 5 star rating to avoid potential damage), 10/250 LY, times 7 = 70. Fuel cost = 200 tons.

I think what's going on is there's a minimum cost of 50 tons of fuel for each ship other than a Support ship sent out on any mission, and if the fuel cost calculation is higher than that minimum, the higher figure is used (rounding up to the nearest 50).

So in my example, the first group's fuel buffs totally offset the fuel cost, but they had 3 Combat ships so minimum of 150. Adding the 4th Combat ship overshot the fuel buff but not by more than 200, so it just defaulted to 200.

[clannagh]

Feel free. The most you can manage with full fleets is 6 expeditions at once but sending out smaller fleets would certianly allow 7 or 8.

If you send all support frigates (which works well for low star balanced missions) it seem sto indicate fuel cost as a dash rather than a numerical zero.

[Jacra]

Great guide, thanks so much!

[Ed Anger]

Awesome, very useful info

[tarnuts]

Originally posted by clannagh:

Feel free. The most you can manage with full fleets is 6 expeditions at once but sending out smaller fleets would certianly allow 7 or 8.

If you send all support frigates (which works well for low star balanced missions) it seem sto indicate fuel cost as a dash rather than a numerical zero.

Thanks clannagh! I added a blurb in the Managing Your Fleet section of the guide about the time considerations for long-term missions (and suggested keeping additional ships / command rooms in reserve to take advantage of the opportunities provided by mission time overlap).

Jacra and Ed Anger, you're very welcome! Right now I'm trying to confirm what loot can be acquired from expeditions and populating a list on the guide page with that info. If you find anything that's not listed there, please post a comment and I'll add it to the list!

I'm still refining the guide, adding sections and content, illustrations, etc - if you think I've missed something, please let me know!

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1505175794