What charts are worth taking

[Gunsaremagic]

distress signal seems to be the best one you might get a free ship

[Somas Pentaline]

You are better off getting the Inhabited Charts (Red building icon) and using to find Transmission Tower. Solve the (simple) problem to get location of Crashed Ship. Very high probability of having no pilot. Works for me :)

[Mr. Bufferlow]

While it takes some experience, (got 4,000+ hours) you actually never need any planetary charts. They are helpful for new players or if just like that feature. I never use charts unless a specific mission requires me to use a chart.

Flying low and slow and just looking out the window works better then the stupid charts IMO. Some station missions will lead you to POIs you might want to find. I will sometimes take a mission just to find a Trade Center, Ancient Ruin, Monolith, or Minor Settlement.

[Felis_Exploria]

It depends on what you are looking for. Want a portal? Then grab the purple chart. If you locate a ruin instead you can still make 500k - 2mil by just digging. Want FSM? Go with red or distress. Want to run a settlement? Buy that map. Need mid range resources for stasis devices or a factory for blueprints? Go green and the security maps.

[Lindy Bomber]

I keep a stack of each of the four basic types (distress, secure, Inhabitied, and ancient) just in case. You could used exo craft scanners for most of those functions but I don't always warp my freighter in to use the exo craft materializer and my exo suit is near maxed out do space isn't an issue.

[Gunsaremagic]

thx

[Krash Megiddo]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

While it takes some experience, (got 4,000+ hours) you actually never need any planetary charts. They are helpful for new players or if just like that feature. I never use charts unless a specific mission requires me to use a chart.

Flying low and slow and just looking out the window works better then the stupid charts IMO. Some station missions will lead you to POIs you might want to find. I will sometimes take a mission just to find a Trade Center, Ancient Ruin, Monolith, or Minor Settlement.

Settlements are the only POI that I need the chart.

[Comradovich]

A: Whatever the chart is for the "exchange 15 nanites for random chart" option. Because that chart isn't truly random, it's fixed for that system. So if you find a system with 15 nanite distress beacon charts, it's pure profit from there.

Originally posted by Somas Pentaline:

You are better off getting the Inhabited Charts (Red building icon) and using to find Transmission Tower. Solve the (simple) problem to get location of Crashed Ship. Very high probability of having no pilot. Works for me :)

Pretty sure you've just been lucky. My results on several years of doing puzzles have been all over the place.

Now there is a way to guarantee no pilot at your crash site, it works like this:
1. Buy at least 5 of the Distress Beacon charts at the navigator.
2. Mash the E, (or whatever your controller button is), until all 5 potential locations this chart can show are marked off. You will get some error messages about a building already being marked, ignore it and keep mashing E. It will eventually mark: An Observatory, an abandoned building, a crashed freighter, and two distress beacon markers. One of those Distress Beacon markers is a ship with a pilot, the other is a free ship.
3. Don't visit any of the other marked locations, but do a flyby of the nearest beacon marker and look for an NPC at the crash site. If you see that NPC, don't get too close and don't land. Keep it marked and go to the other beacon marker.
4. When you get out at the free ship, its marker will disappear from your HUD. You can then use another Distress Beacon chart and the only option it can show you, (other than building already marked errors), is another free ship. You already have the other options marked, and it won't overwrite these.

You can combine my tips, too. For instance, find a system where the 15 nanite option is a distress beacon chart. Buy a stack of these and use my tips to find free ships. If you scrap even a C class ship, it'll usually give you a free C class upgrade or three. Which you can sell for nanites... that you can then spend on more distress beacon charts. Rinse. Repeat.

[Somas Pentaline]

@Comradovich Cool information. Many thanks for expanding my understanding and optimising the finding of crashed ships

[mbrowne999]

Originally posted by Comradovich:

4. When you get out at the free ship, its marker will disappear from your HUD. You can then use another Distress Beacon chart and the only option it can show you, (other than building already marked errors), is another free ship. You already have the other options marked, and it won't overwrite these.

There seems to be a limit to how many crashed ships per planet or system. I wonder if there actually is?

[Somas Pentaline]

Originally posted by mbrowne999:

Originally posted by Comradovich:

4. When you get out at the free ship, its marker will disappear from your HUD. You can then use another Distress Beacon chart and the only option it can show you, (other than building already marked errors), is another free ship. You already have the other options marked, and it won't overwrite these.

There seems to be a limit to how many crashed ships per planet or system. I wonder if there actually is?

I have seen a post on reddit where one planet had over 90 crashed ships on it!!!

[Somas Pentaline]

An extra addition to the technique would be to find a Minor Settlement, Trading Post or Archive that allows you to purchase Navigational Data. The money you get from selling crashed ships would easily pay towards this (almost) infinite supply.

[tinsmith33]

I love doing them under water using the scanner , since you can pick ships only .

[Somas Pentaline]

Originally posted by Comradovich:

A: Whatever the chart is for the "exchange 15 nanites for random chart" option. Because that chart isn't truly random, it's fixed for that system. So if you find a system with 15 nanite distress beacon charts, it's pure profit from there.

Originally posted by Somas Pentaline:

You are better off getting the Inhabited Charts (Red building icon) and using to find Transmission Tower. Solve the (simple) problem to get location of Crashed Ship. Very high probability of having no pilot. Works for me :)

Pretty sure you've just been lucky. My results on several years of doing puzzles have been all over the place.

Now there is a way to guarantee no pilot at your crash site, it works like this:
1. Buy at least 5 of the Distress Beacon charts at the navigator.
2. Mash the E, (or whatever your controller button is), until all 5 potential locations this chart can show are marked off. You will get some error messages about a building already being marked, ignore it and keep mashing E. It will eventually mark: An Observatory, an abandoned building, a crashed freighter, and two distress beacon markers. One of those Distress Beacon markers is a ship with a pilot, the other is a free ship.
3. Don't visit any of the other marked locations, but do a flyby of the nearest beacon marker and look for an NPC at the crash site. If you see that NPC, don't get too close and don't land. Keep it marked and go to the other beacon marker.
4. When you get out at the free ship, its marker will disappear from your HUD. You can then use another Distress Beacon chart and the only option it can show you, (other than building already marked errors), is another free ship. You already have the other options marked, and it won't overwrite these.

You can combine my tips, too. For instance, find a system where the 15 nanite option is a distress beacon chart. Buy a stack of these and use my tips to find free ships. If you scrap even a C class ship, it'll usually give you a free C class upgrade or three. Which you can sell for nanites... that you can then spend on more distress beacon charts. Rinse. Repeat.

THIS IS ABSOLUTELY DIAMOND ADVICE

Note: Once you have found all the marked locations and you located the correct distress signal, then get the crashed ship... if you go to another planet in the system, it will still recognise the marked locations on the previous (original) planet so you can easily use the Distress Beacon chart and it will only select a Distress Signal for a crashed ship (with no pilot).

Thanks again @Comradovich for this amazing tip.

[nowhere man]

Originally posted by Felis_Exploria:

It depends on what you are looking for. Want a portal? Then grab the purple chart. If you locate a ruin instead you can still make 500k - 2mil by just digging. Want FSM? Go with red or distress. Want to run a settlement? Buy that map. Need mid range resources for stasis devices or a factory for blueprints? Go green and the security maps.

The minimum value of unearthed artifacts is not 500k but like 170k or even lower than that i've seen. If it was 500k it would be kind of worth doing ruin search versus storm crystals, bones or eggs.