Does anyone use black holes?

[NZ.Zero]

Whats the point of them? They just smash up your inventory and send you somewhere random .. am I missing something?

[cswiger]

Yes. They send you a long ways away which will be much closer to the center of the galaxy.

They are much faster than doing a bunch of hyper jumps, but much slower than using a portal if you understand portal coordinates.

[tkwoods]

They warp you a great distance to places you probably would not have gone otherwise. They also move you a bit closer to center. (1500ish LY).

They used to be a way to get to center more quickly but new methods have eclipsed them.

[Galadhlinn]

I believe you travel about twice the distance of a fully upgraded freighter. But they only move you toward the center of the galaxy, no other direction. My very first save I went all the way to the center of Euclid in my ship only using black holes twice. I'm glad I made the journey, but have never felt the need to do it again. There are several ways to jump to other galaxies without the long manual journey, but I do recommend everyone do it at least once for the accomplishment.

[NZ.Zero]

Originally posted by cswiger:

They are much faster than doing a bunch of hyper jumps, .

Not with decent hyperdrive upgrades, my starship can go further I reckon.

Originally posted by tkwoods:

places you probably would not have gone

Yesh I guess thats the main use case for them now - a 'pot luck warp'??!!

Originally posted by Galadhlinn:

I went all the way to the center of Euclid in my ship only using black holes twice. .

either you started very close or theyve nerffed the black holes since then, cos it would have taken me 100 jumps using black holes....

[tkwoods]

Originally posted by Galadhlinn:

I believe you travel about twice the distance of a fully upgraded freighter. But they only move you toward the center of the galaxy, no other direction. My very first save I went all the way to the center of Euclid in my ship only using black holes twice. I'm glad I made the journey, but have never felt the need to do it again. There are several ways to jump to other galaxies without the long manual journey, but I do recommend everyone do it at least once for the accomplishment.

I disagree to a point. A black hole does move you toward center by a 1500 LY or so amount but the distance traveled could be 500,000 LY or more. Basically from one side of the galaxy to the other.

Agree about the achievement if it's important to the player. I did it before the other ways to to another galaxy existed.

[XorOfSteel]

his is gaming folklore. blackholes DO NOT send you closer to the center. They only send you to a random location.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by NZ.Zer0:

Originally posted by cswiger:

They are much faster than doing a bunch of hyper jumps, .

Not with decent hyperdrive upgrades, my starship can go further I reckon.

How far can your ship go?

Black holes move you 7000 ly (+/- 1000 ly) closer to the center.

[SaD-82]

Originally posted by XorOfSteel:

They only send you to a random location.

Not quite true.
You will cover some light years towards the center (sometimes not, but overall in averaging out you do). The amount of light years is somewhere between 0 and up to 7k. If you're in the outer rim it goes up to 300k.
With a fully decked out freighter (6k jump range), you don't need black holes. Up until you're at this stage they can shorten your journey. By a small margin.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Black holes are not very important anymore as a travel option. There was a time when they were one of the best ways to shorten a trip to the center.

At some point they went from a random location to a set location. A group started the Black Holes Sun website and you could use the user created database to travel anywhere in the galaxy a lot quicker. You could also help update the database with new black hole start/stop coordinates.

That was (IMO) the golden age of NMS. A lot of user involvement and navigating the stars was very challenging, but also very rewarding when you finally reached your destination. Now, it is more like a bus route with no challenge but it is quick and convenient to get anywhere fast.

So to answer your question...no, unless I just want to do one for a lark.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by XorOfSteel:

his is gaming folklore. blackholes DO NOT send you closer to the center. They only send you to a random location.

Wrong. You can easily test this by looking at the center distance before and after jumping through a black hole. Or you could double-check a reference like the wiki:

https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Black_Hole

Black Holes take you to a fixed star system across the galaxy. If any technology modules exist in your starship general inventory, some may be be damaged at random upon arrival to the new system (modules in technology inventory are safe). Black holes will always move you closer to the centre by approximately 7,000 light-years (+/- 1,000 ly) unless they are part of the hyper black holes which can be used to travel vast distances of over 300,000 light-years towards it.

[Rexxer]

No. They are an artifact from a much simpler early version of the game when there was no easy fast way to the center. But even black holes are not that useful in that regard because you are spun around the galaxy like a steel ball bouncing around a Roulette wheel, only getting about 5000 to 7000 ly closer at a time. Since the starship can be upgraded to about 4000 ly (assuming the best starting stats, upgrades and synergies), you are not doing that much better with black holes. Worse, black holes will break some technology you have in your inventory, so you always have to stop and repair things.

When fully upgraded, freighters are faster, but eat more fuel. It is a long process to upgrade them though. Starships are much faster to upgrade to their maximum.

The fastest way of all has been around from the start: planetary Portals....the stargate like portals. If you have researched how the glyph addresses work, anyone can leap from their spawn point to the galaxy center within an hour or so of starting the game.

The only thing that makes black holes a little more interesting is that if you take one AT the center of the galaxy, then immediately warp from an edge system to the galaxy center, ...your spawn point in the next galaxy will be at the CENTER rather than the outer rim. Using a Black Hole like that can actually save you a ton of time IF you are traversing all 256 galaxies and trying to do so in the least amount of time.

You save time with the center BH's because when you spawn, normally you have to locate a monolith, then a portal, and then jump to the center....all of which consumes a lot of time plus a few maps and resources. Probably close to a half an hour. If you spawn at the center, then you save about 1/2 hour per galaxy. Saving 128 hours over 256 is no small change.

[cswiger]

Originally posted by Rexxer:

...only getting about 5000 to 7000 ly closer at a time. Since the starship can be upgraded to about 4000 ly (assuming the best starting stats, upgrades and synergies), you are not doing that much better with black holes.

Black holes usually move you 6000 - 8000 ly closer. The spoiler describes a possibility of moving much farther than that. And you note a trick about traversing multiple galaxies.

The largest ship hyperdrive range appears to be ~3200 ly, although maybe a little better is possible. Of course, you can't jump straight at the core; you can only jump to star systems, which means you won't actually get more than 2500 or so ly closer on average.

Worse, black holes will break some technology you have in your inventory, so you always have to stop and repair things.

Solution: place tech only in tech slots.

Of course, that will limit your hyperdrive range to more like 1000 ly, but that's not a problem if you are moving through multiple black holes.

[Rexxer]

Originally posted by cswiger:

The largest ship hyperdrive range appears to be ~3200 ly, although maybe a little better is possible.

That is no longer correct. With the higher hyperdrive ranges of some off market upgrades you can do much better. The highest S-Class modules were only 250 ly, but off market go noticably higher. Most never attempt to max out their ranges beyond a few 230s maybe a 240. Just using those lower values (210 to 240 ly) you can easily exceed 3000 ly. And that is not even trying very hard. Maybe two rounds of module purchases max.

To get the highest ranges you need to purchase many many upgrade modules. Each "module" is in fact more like a ticket that lets you peek at the next RNG value, so specific modules are irrelevant. Just get mass quantities of them and open them, one by one, discarding the lowest values. Same is true with black market stuff as well. And at least one YouTuber, Xaine, noticed there seems to be a high end spike on black market stuff now rather than a normal distribution.

[XorOfSteel]

Originally posted by SaD-82:

Originally posted by XorOfSteel:

They only send you to a random location.

Not quite true.
You will cover some light years towards the center (sometimes not, but overall in averaging out you do). The amount of light years is somewhere between 0 and up to 7k. If you're in the outer rim it goes up to 300k.
With a fully decked out freighter (6k jump range), you don't need black holes. Up until you're at this stage they can shorten your journey. By a small margin.

not my experience, they were always random and usually farther away. if they were closer, it would be from the other side of the galaxy.

[Galadhlinn]

Originally posted by NZ.Zer0:

Originally posted by cswiger:

They are much faster than doing a bunch of hyper jumps, .

Not with decent hyperdrive upgrades, my starship can go further I reckon.

Originally posted by tkwoods:

places you probably would not have gone

Yesh I guess thats the main use case for them now - a 'pot luck warp'??!!

Originally posted by Galadhlinn:

I went all the way to the center of Euclid in my ship only using black holes twice. .

either you started very close or theyve nerffed the black holes since then, cos it would have taken me 100 jumps using black holes....

I started about 2/3 of the way out from the center if the visual representation of the galactic map is reasonably accurate. It took me over a month with many days doing 20+ jumps a day. Which is likely why I never felt the need to do it again. : P