A Sky Full of....Confusing Navigation Symbols and some Stars.

Thus far, my adventures in the ginormous galaxy of No Man's Sky has only seen me visit three different systems.  I know, I know...I should probably be making more headway into different places, but it's just so dang hard to leave a planet unexplored.  Not only have I gotten distracted by exploring, but I've finally managed to unlock base building missions and have been trying to beef up my pathetic base (which used to be a one room shack with a teleporter, but now I have a small base complex with an overseer and science specialist--it's starting to look like an actual base!).  One of the more daunting parts of NMS is deciding exactly what path you want to pursue.  I've decided to simply meander down a bunch of different paths which means that I've made a tiny bit of progress on a few of random things.

I don't have a picture of my new ship, so enjoy this random critter.

The first random thing that I ended up getting completely zeroed in on was trying to upgrade my ship.  There is basically no explanation in the game about how to get a better ship so I had to Google a few pointers.  I kept stumbling across these bits of navigation data and had no idea that I could utilize them with my signal booster.  Navigation data can be used to locate specific points of interest on the surface of any planet--you get a few options for how you want to use the data, you can search for ruins (where you can dig up keys and unlock a large, ancient chest which usually has a piece of valuable loot inside), search for nearby buildings, or search for distress signals.  I was experimenting
 and chose to search for a distress signal having absolutely no idea what it might lead to.  As far as I can tell, distress signals will lead to either a crashed freighter (where you can search for abandoned cargo pods and unearth some loot) or a crashed ship.  Once you've located a crashed ship, you have the option of repairing the ship and recovering it.

Here are a few pointers if you've been wondering about how to repair and/or acquire a new ship:

1.) If you find a damaged ship on the surface of a planet, you can repair it.  The first thing that you should focus on while repairing is getting the ship flight worthy--repair the systems that are needed to fly (thrusters and the pulse engine).  Once the ship can take off, it will automatically fly to your freighter after you change back to your original ship (or save and reload).  Your freighter can store up to six ships.  After that, it's just a matter of cobbling together the massive amount of materials that are needed to fully repair your new ship.

The ship I found is a class called a hauler--as the name implies, it has a decent amount of cargo space to transport items.  I've been seriously struggling with the inventory limitations of my small fighter and hope that having a more spacious ship will allow me to find more items during my explorations.  The downside of finding a ship with a larger cargo hold is that it is requiring an unholy crapton of materials to repair all the damaged bits.

2.) Buying a new ship is as easy as going to a spaceport (or your own freighter) and clicking on a ship that has landed and then selecting the option to "make an offer on the ship."  Once you've chosen to make an offer, you can see the specs of the ship and enter into negotiation.  You can choose to either trade your current ship (which will figure into the total value of the trade) or you can buy the new ship outright.  The advantage of buying a new ship is that there are no repairs to be made.  Remember to swap all your cargo--if you don't, you can't get it back after you've traded.

It would have been great if these two facts had been explained in any way.  They aren't, so I had to either figure it out on my own or Google it.

Much of my recent NMS time has been spent trying to cobble together enough materials to fully repair the Osarita Calculator XVIII (my semi-repaired hauler).  I've mostly been running around, mining oodles of copper nodes to try to craft the bajillion units of chromatic metal that I need to fix everything.  While I've been running around, I've discovered that the navigation system in the game is slightly obnoxious.  Symbols pop-up when you scan--you can tag them, but they don't go away after you've mined a deposit or activated a knowledge stone.  Sometimes you can tag a symbol and keep it on screen...other times you can't (it's pointless to try to tag a settlement...it won't tag it..stop trying).  Navigation symbols for other planets will appear even if you're on a different planet, which adds to the mish-mash of stuff on screen.

Another part of navigation that bugs me is the whole concept of discovering new regions.  There are markers for specific "regions" scattered around the surface of the planets.  You can activate the marker to save and "discover" a region.  Discovering a region grants a bonus of units and the data can be uploaded for nanite clusters.  After you've discovered a region, there's no identifying marker or map information added, which sucks.  It would be nice if there was some sort of marker that would allow you to return to an area or at least make it easier to identify--maybe even a descriptor of some of the resources that you can find in the area.

I can't wait to finally repair my new ship and to be able to have adequate cargo space for all my discoveries.  The inventory management aspect of the game has been a bit frustrating so far.

UPDATE 8/8/2018:  It turns out that using navigation data to find distress signals can also lead you to a distress beacon with basically nothing near it.  There might be some damaged machinery to fis (and I would recommend that you fix it--I've found some good mod upgrades).  It won't necessarily lead you to a crashed ship--but there's a chance.

Another handy tidbit that I was kicking myself for not figuring out sooner is that once you've built a medium or large refiner in your base there are specific "recipes" which can make refining metal much quicker.  I was stupidly refining copper straight into chromatic metal which is a 2:1 ratio.  A much better formula involves combining copper with pure ferrite (which is abundant on every planet but does require an advanced mining beam) which yields a 1:3 ratio!  Way, way less copper hunting!