Ship exchanging

[AdrianVaughan]

As a new player (well first time really got in to nms) with ships do i just trade my old one for a new one each time until i reach max slots ? or is there a negative cost if i was to do it this way ?

Thanks

[CatPerson]

If you "trade/exchange" a ship, you lose your currently active ship (new ship replaces it), meaning you'd never reach max slots. :)

To add a ship to the collection, you Buy/Purchase whatever the game terminology is.

Edit: the same applies to the multi-tool. I think you can have up to six separate MT's.

[AdrianVaughan]

but i would have more slots in my new ship with each trade i do ? as other ships have more slots then my ship so in the end i would find a ship with the max slots ?

[CatPerson]

After some time passed, I started wondering if you were talking about max ship storage slots, not max ship "collection" slots.

If that was the case - I've never seen a ship for sale or a crashed ship etc. that came even remotely close to having max storage slots. Not even S tier ones. Do I know 100% for sure it can never ever ever happen - since I've never looked at files/scripts to that extent, no I don't. But I would highly highly doubt it. You'd still have to get a lot of those storage augment items to actually max out any ship storage.

Edit: I think ships can have max of ... 105-120 slots? Depends a bit on ship type? Don't quote me.
EditEdit: average higher storage I've seen on higher tier ships on initial spawn is a little around 40 (Haulers) I think. Usually more like 30-33.

[CatPerson]

Argh, since I can never seem to get all my thoughts into one post:

--disadvantage of always exchanging would be that scrapping a ship you don't want has a chance of giving you a storage augment. Not a guarantee. Maybe higher tier ship scraps have a higher chance of it. Plus some ship tech modules to use or sell.

[Praxis-W]

Eventually you'll have an S-Class ship of one of the varieties commonly available. This will not give you a ship with maximum storage and equipment slots. (It will be better than most ships you start with, or can salvage, however.) Trading ships up can get you a ship with lots of room, but never one maxxed out on storage space.
You still need to find expansion modules for the ship. Either through missions or having the credits to buy them at the upgrade stations.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Now that you can store the ship upgrades, it can make sense to exchange for a ship with slightly more slots if it is at least the same class of the one you currently have.

Review the trade carefully before pulling the trigger. In some cases the ship you want might not have all the same equipment as the one you are giving up. You can store that equipment from the old ship and reinstall it after exchange, but you have to be vigilant.

Sooner or later, you will run into a ship that has a higher class but perhaps equal or less slots. Then you have to decide if it would be wiser to buy it outright, exchange for it, or just pass it by.

Don't fret too much. You can always recover from a poorly thought out deal. The game is very generous so it is not the end of the world if you have second thoughts or missed something important before you accepted the deal.

[Foxglovez]

As you can see by these answers, you can do that but you won't ever get max slots. That is a mini-game that you get to play while you learn the game and work on your tutorial quests. Looking for better ships is a big part of NMS but at the beginning you might just want to play, learn the game and build up a nest egg which the game will help you do.

Your beginner ship isn't all bad and you can make yourself nuts trying to do everything right away. That little old ship will do what you need it to do while you build up your funds. If you are swapping out and spending all your few units over and over again you might just be spinning your wheels as at this point you probably wouldn't know a good ship from a bad one.
TL DR Save your allowance and don't spend it all on ice cream...

[cogvos]

All the ships in the game are procedurally generated in their looks and stats. So what you come across while travelling is going to be fairly random when it comes to the current cargo slots. None will have the maximum possible number and will have a range depending on their class and type.

As @Foxglovez said above, that starter ship is not bad. That typed, if once you are more familiar with the game you want to set out and find your ideal ship...

An explanation on ships can be found here > https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Starship

There is quite a lot to read, but the main take-away is that there are 4 personal ship classes; with C being the lowest, B the next highest, A - a good ship and S class the best.

This does not mean that an S class will have more slots than a C when you find it, as this also depends on its type and its size. Rather an S class will have better base stats for damage, manoeuvrability, warp range, etc, than a C. So an S class fighter without any upgrades will have a higher damage than a C class without any upgrades.

For the different ship types: There are 4 common ones you'll see a lot of - Shuttle, Fighter, Explorer and Hauler. Each type gets a bonus, so fighters have more base damage than a hauler, but a hauler has a higher maximum shield. Then there are 'special' ships such as exotics, living ships, solar ships. and sentinel which stir the mix somewhat.

You can scan a ship using the analysis visor and this will give you a lot of info on it, the class will be shown as something like S:34:18. Here S is the class, 34 the current number of cargo slots and 18 the current number of technology slots.

There is a massive resource on where you can find particular ships on Reddit at https://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyShips/ .

Since you can have 12 ships in your fleet you can easily collect one of each type to see which you like the most. Expanding the cargo slots is expensive, however you can obtain storage augmentation erm... things, which allow you to increase either the technology slots or general cargo slots once per augmentation up to the ship type's maximum.

This link explains ways of getting these > https://nomanssky.fandom.com/wiki/Storage_Augmentation

So once you have decided on the type, look etc of the ship you are after try and get one with as close to the basic standard, unexpanded maximum as possible. Generally I go on looks and colour and you can of course get one you really like the look of with far fewer current cargo slots, for one thing they will be a lot cheaper to buy. However you could have a horrible grind expanding it to something you are happy with.

Finally don't miss the chance of salvaging a crashed ship, they take time to repair but you can end up with something very special.

[Tirandys]

As you aquire and keep more ships you can have up to 12 ships. The pillar starts in slot 1 and as you get more without swapping ships they will fill up in the order you get them. If you go into the x menu and all the way to the right you have to option to summon other ship. You can do this anywhere except on the space station. You can also scrap ships at the space station.