Marking points of interest

[RJS]

Is there any way to mark cities and big stations on a single planet for future return besides building a base next to every one?
I find it incredulous and seriously immersion breaking that operations the size of a space station are just gone forever once you leave unless you somehow stumble across them randomly again.

[Mr. Bufferlow]

Putting down a base computer is probably the easiest and most convenient way. The save beacons work and you can color them but you will need to remember what system it was in. If it is a congested area, like an Expedition, it can be really hard to know which of the many icons is your save beacon.

Not so bad if you are just playing the game normally. I usually name the system something memorable and use a color code for save beacons.

Red is always a portal
Green is some kind of POI where you can buy and sell
Yellow is for something unusual- like a crashed ship

You can come up with whatever code colors fit your fancy, but I like green for money transactions and red for portals since the color stands out.

[The Tempted Man]

save points or beacons?

[Foxglovez]

NOT save points. Beacons are not that good as you can only have a limited number per planet, 5iirc, and no way to name them, it's easy to get them mixed up with others save points and unless you keep a notebook or some manner of scratch pad, you will forget why you have it. You also can't portal to it so you have to get to that system, remember what planet it's on, fly there, yadda yadda. Base compys are really the only good way to get back quick and if it's something you plan to go back to regularly like a mold location plop down a simple portal w one battery and 3 solar panels for the win. You can always delete it if you lose interest in that POI. On a long term save it's not a bad idea to go back and clean things up every once in a while just for drill. This game is all about moving forward.

[UncreativelyNamed]

If all else fails, just note down the system name, planet name, and coordinates of the POI on a good old-fashioned piece of paper. Your current coordinates show when you use the analysis visor when on foot or on a screen in your ship's interior when you fly it in first-person.

But in reality? There are many, many, many, MANY of that same POI on any planet that has POIs, so there's really not a whole lot of reason to return to any particular one. Just find another on a different planet or on the same planet. The big archives are especially easy to spot when flying over the surface of a planet.

[Zigamus Wizard]

Originally posted by Mr. Bufferlow:

Putting down a base computer is probably the easiest and most convenient way. The save beacons work and you can color them but you will need to remember what system it was in. If it is a congested area, like an Expedition, it can be really hard to know which of the many icons is your save beacon.

Not so bad if you are just playing the game normally. I usually name the system something memorable and use a color code for save beacons.

Red is always a portal
Green is some kind of POI where you can buy and sell
Yellow is for something unusual- like a crashed ship

You can come up with whatever code colors fit your fancy, but I like green for money transactions and red for portals since the color stands out.

I want to endorse what he said about BASE COMPUTERS as markers for important locations and give the rest of the reasons that these are great markers.

1. You may have 450 base computers per save file.
2. You can teleport to them! Cannot do this to any other marker method.
3. You can NAME it something that makes sense, again cannot with anything else.
4. You can 'code color' it if you like.
5. You do not need to build a base, just place and activate the BC.

In my mind this makes then the VERY BEST markers for anything!

There is only one issue that sometimes will come up, in that the area you are in is 'owned' by something else, like another player's base, or a settlement, cant place BC in those areas, but you CAN place it at all POIs.

[RJS]

Thanks!

[dreamrider]

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

If all else fails, just note down the system name, planet name, and coordinates of the POI on a good old-fashioned piece of paper. Your current coordinates show when you use the analysis visor when on foot or on a screen in your ship's interior when you fly it in first-person.

But in reality? There are many, many, many, MANY of that same POI on any planet that has POIs, so there's really not a whole lot of reason to return to any particular one. Just find another on a different planet or on the same planet. The big archives are especially easy to spot when flying over the surface of a planet.

I drop a BC outside the door of every Manufacturing Center that I find on my home base planet. Also on:
- a few CD fields,
- the very best F. Crystal fields,
- a few MSets that sell highly discounted Wiring Looms, or decent amounts of key non-native ship/MT repair resources (Parafinium, Phosphorous, Pyrite, Uranium, Ammonia, Dioxite, etc)
- occasionally an Operations Center may be worth marking for return; judgement call.

All those POIs reset over time, CD fields and MSets quickly, F. Crystals and Factories much more slowly.

But when you finally find that ideal MT that you want to expand, being able to return in a round-robin run to 20-25 reset Factories to collect Augmentation modules is wonderful.

Likewise being able to raid a 15 to 20 ball CD field(s) repeatedly, when you are trying to surge nanites to promote that great tool or ship to S-class.

The other location markers (Save Beacons, even Navigation Markers) have their uses, but only BCs let you label your POI sites...which is essential when you ultimately have 30-40 sites marked on you primary base planet.

On other planets of the home base system i will plant bases more sparsely, at only the best of the above type sites.

Beyond the home base system, I will plant bases only rarely, thought I will often put at least one base in a system that I may want to specifically return to, for special stuff (Activated XXXX, Storm Crystals, ?Basalt?, etc.)

Occasionally and periodically I will clean out old base computers that have faded in usefulness.
Eventually you don't need as many MT slot expanders, and you have the BPs for most/all techs. More so now with the expanded Guild functions. Then you can clear a lot of the Factory and Ops Center BCs. Likewise, you may decide that you have sufficient other ways to generate nanites (frigate missions, etc) that you no longer need your CD fields.


BTW. Maybe I am just dull, or issue blind, but can someone explain to me how to color code the Save Beacons? I've looked, but don't get it.

And to the guy who said he color codes his BCs:
Boy, if that's true, I REALLY want some instructions on that!

[DukeSatan]

Colouring is the same for most things, even base computers if you are changing the colour AFTER it has been placed:

1) Start build menu
2) Edit Placed Parts (default 'C')
3) Look at item you want to change (so it goes faded)
4) Edit colours (Default 'G')
5) Set colour and material to suit, on the BC this will affect the ICON (Main colour)
6) Right click (if mouse) to exit, repeat on all other items.

For items of the same colour as the prior edited, tapping G (colour) on a block that was the same as the first will apply the last set colour and NOT bring up the colour edit, this allows quick colouring of all similar blocks to the new colour, a second tap on G allows editing of the colour if needed, useful. :)

[Zigamus Wizard]

Exactly!

As for color code, you mentioned a list of interesting locations in your game, NOW you can color code those so that you don't actually have to read the name, just locate the right color!

You also mentioned multiple locations on the same planet, this is where Save Beacons can be useful, the BC is useful but if you want a second location around a base computer to be marked you can color the save beacon the same as the BC and then you can tell the difference by the icon, base or star.

[Zigamus Wizard]

Originally posted by Foxglovez:

Base compys are really the only good way to get back quick and if it's something you plan to go back to regularly like a mold location plop down a simple portal w one battery and 3 solar panels for the win. You can always delete it if you lose interest in that POI. On a long term save it's not a bad idea to go back and clean things up every once in a while just for drill. This game is all about moving forward.

Let me add this comment to that advice, if you place a proximity sensor by the teleport gate, and hook that to the battery and the teleport, then it will only use the available power when you are close enough to it to use the teleporter, this makes sure that there will always be power when you want it.

Using the proximity sensors this way is a good tip for short range teleporters also so they don't draw power unless required. (NOTE this does not work if the SRT is placed in a prefab structure, because anything placed in prefabs or cuboid structures are automatically powered (connected to power) by the structure, and cannot be 'disabled' if unneeded). Another note is that SRTs only require power to send, they do not need to be powered at the destination, until you wish to use it to 'port in the other direction and then it needs to be powered.

I mostly build with the non-prefab stuff so this is a very handy tip for my style, YMMV.

[UncreativelyNamed]

Originally posted by dreamrider:

I drop a BC outside the door of every Manufacturing Center that I find on my home base planet. Also on:
- a few CD fields,
- the very best F. Crystal fields,
- a few MSets that sell highly discounted Wiring Looms, or decent amounts of key non-native ship/MT repair resources (Parafinium, Phosphorous, Pyrite, Uranium, Ammonia, Dioxite, etc)
- occasionally an Operations Center may be worth marking for return; judgement call.

All those POIs reset over time, CD fields and MSets quickly, F. Crystals and Factories much more slowly...

I can see how this might be useful, but for me? I don't really put down roots and once I'm done thoroughly exploring a system, I don't often return to it. If I have a "home base" at all, it's on a freighter, and if I have a freighter, I always build all the storage units on it. I keep them full of basic resources, so if I'm running low on something, I seek out and plop myself onto new planets that have the resources I need to restock and go on a little mining mission. (I'm weird, I guess, in that I enjoy manually mining ore deposits. LOL ) So, I never buy resources. Why buy when you can get them for free, is my opinion.

And I've never understood the attraction of curious deposits. Maybe it's my "anti-roots" position, which is compounded by the fact that I always use stack sizes of either 300 or 500, so gathering and refining the runaway mold is much more trouble than it's worth, for me. So if I want nanites for whatever reason, I'll pick a planet that has POIs, find an abandoned building, grab all the larval cores from the whispering egg clusters around them, and refine them all into nanites in my personal refiner. At 50 nanites per core, plus the ~140 nanites you get from the terminal in the abandoned building, you get between ~1000-2500 nanites per building, depending on the size of the building. (Larger buildings have more egg clusters around them.) Get back in the ship, find another abandoned building, get all the cores, etc. Repeat until I have the nanites I want. Abandoned buildings reset over time, but since there are probably hundreds of them on every planet that has such POIs, there's really no reason to mark them. Unless you can't be bothered to find them, I guess, but I enjoy flying over planets, looking at the scenery. :)

Another good nanite source is buried caches. Not only do you get the records you can "cash in" for nanites, but you quite often get X-class upgrade modules. If you don't need them, they sell for a decent amount of nanites at tech vendors on space stations. Or you can install and then dismantle them and get yourself a bunch of free wiring looms to keep on-hand. Same with damaged machinery, which quite often give A- and S-class upgrade modules, which also sell for a good amount of nanites.

Of course, all of this depends on your play style. I'm a nomad, so it makes little sense to me to mark a bunch of places that I'll probably never go back to, especially since almost every planet in non-abandoned and non-uncharted systems is rich with resources and POIs. The only time I will occasionally return to a place I've been to is very, very early in a save, before I have a lot of resources or cash-on-hand. Then I might want to go back to, for instance, a minor settlement that has a really nice multitool that I can't yet afford to buy. But that phase of a save just doesn't last very long for me.

[SapienChavez]

Originally posted by RJS:

I find it incredulous and seriously immersion breaking that operations the size of a space station are just gone forever once you leave unless you somehow stumble across them randomly again.

OP, to this point, if you install the trade radar in your ship, you can see the flight paths of other ships trade routes. this can lead you to these planetary stations. While I do agree with your point and general sentiment, the games does try to have the NPCs keep going and stopping at these stations and platforms with inter-system trade routes. There is actually a fairly elaborate system that nearly all of us players just ignore, having to do with trade routes within a single system.

[SapienChavez]

Originally posted by UncreativelyNamed:

And I've never understood the attraction of curious deposits. Maybe it's my "anti-roots" position, which is compounded by the fact that I always use stack sizes of either 300 or 500, so gathering and refining the runaway mold is much more trouble than it's worth, for me.

Mold is the single fastest source of nanites on a regular save (not on survival or permadeath). That is the attraction. That's its, only reason.

You need the right plot. I have one that drops 22,000 mold from some 28 balls. i can get well over 100k in an hour using my base teleporter to send me 900u away and back.

nothing compares to mold and I have tried EVERY system. You just have to find a MASSIVE deposit. (2-3 balls out in the wild doesnt even register, i feel you on that!)

for Survival/PD, you have to hit a pirate system and crack open Tech and Arms from the trader and sell them for nanites. I can also hit the near 100k/hour mark, but i have to warp all over and spend a bunch of units.

[Chirico Cuvie]

Photomode, printscreen glyphs (bottom left). Use it later at a glyph portal. That's what I do for interresting sentinel ships. Other worthy points of interrest, base computer.

[SharkPlush]

Put a base right by a glyph portal, too.