Ships in No Man's Sky

Piloting, Weapons, and Upgrading Starship Equipment

Your ship is key to the experience in No Man's Sky, much like the multi-tool and exosuit. You can freely upgrade your ship, buy or repair new vessels, and gradually progress toward an awesome starship with 48-slots and numerous technological improvements. This guide to ships and everything about them in No Man's Sky will teach you the fundamentals of improving your ship and give an overview of all its weapon, propulsion, and defense components.

Using Your Ship

Your ship can freely go from land to space and engage in interstellar travel. On land, enter and exit your ship with the action button (See the Controls Page). Any time you leave the ship, whether in a starbase or on land, the game will save. While piloting the ship, you can speed up and slow down, roll left and right, or engage boosters to hit your ship's maximum speed. There are different maximum speeds, based on altitude and your ship's upgrades. It tops out around 3km over the planet's surface where the air is thinner.

Ships in No Man's Sky can utilize two different types of weapons - the default is the Photon Cannon. It's very useful for breaking up large asteroids and mining their materials, while also being the primary weapon for combat at close to medium range. Next is the highly accurate Phase Beam, which is an optional weapon that is longer ranged but has a slow firing rate without upgrades. Neither cannot be used on planets (you can fire, but it does nothing). While in the air on a planet or outside in space, you can engage in dogfights - fighting friendly ships of any kind will grant you a Wanted Level with Sentinels, and your target will fight back. Try this on a freighter in a weak ship if you'd like to die. However, a career as a pirate is certainly a viable option in this game, but probably not by itself. You'll still need to mine resources.

When not in combat your ship can engage its pulse drive to travel at the speed of light. This lets you cross large distances and turn a 1 hour transit time into less than 1 minute. Very handy when planets are spread far apart, or when you're returning to a starbase to sell your loot. Your ship being upgraded is probably the highest priority in No Man's Sky, it comes second only to getting the first few Exosuit inventory upgrades. This is because you need more slots to carry elemental resources (the ship holds 500 per slot) and more slots will give you more freedom to upgrade your starship without compromising your ability to carry items.

Traveling from one star system to another in No Man's Sky does involve a loading screen. You'll be taken to a map of nearby stars. You can select free exploration mode to look around and may select any star within your ship's maximum warp range. Certain stars require warp reactor sigma, tau, or theta. All three will boost your maximum range. When you select the star, you're taken to warp (a glorified loading screen, which isn't so bad) and arrive at the new system. Players can choose to follow waypoints by changing the mode at the top of the screen (primarily for the path of the atlas) or waypoints they set themselves to help them get back to stars or solar systems that interest them.

Get a Better Ship

I have a guide dedicated to the ways you can buy or find a better ship. In short, you can use scanning stations to look for transmissions and find a transmission tower which always leads to a crashed ship that you can repair. It is usually +/- one slot from your ship. Real upgrades come from buying them. Traders who visit space stations are willing to sell ships for a price. As you buy new ships, you'll see more and more advanced ships in stations - the odds of a great 40+ slot ship visiting increases. When you're at 20 slots, it's more likely you'll see ships in the 24-30 range.

Better, Faster, Stronger Ships = Inventory Slots

Slots are everything for ships. Each slot can hold 500 resources (elements only) or one piece of equipment. There is no difference in two ships' potential aside from slots, though you can see how two ships compare by looking at the circular bars on the compare screen (one with defense upgrades will have a larger circle in that category). This does not mean that one is not better at carrying things, and another not faster. That is up to you. The upgrades you place will take up slots.

You want as many slots as you can afford, up to the max of 48, and hopefully get a ship you find pleasing to the eye. You may want a tanky ship with lots of capacity - then only upgrade your ship's deflector shields. A combat ship would want weapons and shield upgrades, and so on. A fast ship for mining could add an extra phase drive or two in order to maximize speed moving between ore veins. You do have customization options, ships are different, but you have total control over that. Don't get me wrong - I do wish there were different models with inherent strengths.

Basic Ship Parts, Weapons and Fuels

All ships in No Man's Sky have the following components - they are necessary for them to function in space, when landed on planets, and for interstellar travel. All but one are required and cannot be scrapped. Every ship you buy will come with the main 5:

Launch Thruster

Used to lift off from the planet, not utilized otherwise. Launches are free in starbases and on trade station platforms. Launch thrusters function 4x then need refueled with Plutonium, readily available on all planets in crystal form and found frequently in isotope supply boxes. The launch thruster is the only ship component that does not feature any upgrades.

Phase Drive

This is used for space flight and features two modes. The main mode is star wars style hyperdrive, with a countdown of 5 seconds before it initiates. This is not usable in combat because of jammers, though you can hit it just before the attack begins to flee the scene. While using the Pulse Engine you cannot be hit by asteroids and the ship moves you at 9999 units per second. This is used to traverse large distances and consumes much more fuel than the secondary mode. The second mode is about 1/6 that speed and used for achieving maximum velocity when you've left warp and still have some distance to travel. You can control your ship while boosting in this way, but cannot do so while the main pulse drive is engaged. Your ship will be rather slow without Pulse Engines active. Pulse Engines are rarely refueled and take Thamium9, readily available from asteroids.

Deflector Shield

This is used to protect your ship from asteroid impacts and enemy lasers. Any time your shield is down, you're 5 good hits away from ship destruction. Oxide elements are used to recharge deflector shields during combat, they regenerate slowly over time.

Photon Cannon

The Photon Cannon pictured above in the asteroid mining picture is your ship's main weapon and fires photon bolts at a few per second. It's great for spreading out damage around areas on asteroids. It has an awful tendency of overheating so is not meant for use more than a couple seconds, though cooldown upgrades are excellent for mining the big space potatoes. Fire in bursts to avoid overheating during combat, but certainly lay into them if they're flying straight at you. Photon Cannons do not require fuel, thus their superiority for mining.

Phase Beam

A secondary weapon that can be upgraded to become your primary damage dealer in ship combat. It still cannot compare to the Photon Cannon for mining asteroids, because the cannon is free to use. Phase Beams, unlike Photon Cannons, do require charge - Isotopes. You'll get 100 basic shots before needing to refuel, and they take a lot of fuel - only warp reactors take more resources to operate.

Warp Reactor (Hyperdrive)

You don't start the game with one of these unless you use a pre-order ship, you'll have to get one first. The warp reactor is used to travel from star to star and not used within individual star systems. You'll get 5 uses before needing to craft more Warp Cells from Antimatter. Each Warp Cell is worth one jump. Your maximum jump range is based on the hyperdrive engine(s) you have installed.

Scanner

Every ship has a scanner, it's not reliant on the scanner on your multi-tool. You can use this while on a planet to see '?' locations. While in space, you may detect entire buildings. I suppose it's the lack of interference. Each use has a percentage chance of finding a location - often abandoned buildings and trading stations. You do not use any resources to utilize this tool, so why not scan often if you're seeking places to land in that system? Saves you some bypass chips!

Upgrading Ship Equipment and Using Linking Bonuses

Upgrading any form of equipment in No Man's Sky means only having the item in the ship's inventory, it then automatically boosts what it's supposed to boost. You'll learn new upgrades from blueprints you find from places like Manufacturing Facilities, Operations Centers, and from friendly aliens you meet (See Signal Scanners to hunt them down). What is not explained directly in the game are linking bonuses.

Linking Bonuses are connections between equipment that enhance the bonuses you receive. When two or more upgrades for the same type of part - for example warp drive sigma, tau, and theta - or several phase beam upgrades of different types (cooldown, damage) are installed next to one another, they will be surrounded by an aura, with the color based on the equipment type. This aura indicates linking bonuses are active and the parts are getting improved output.

For damage or cooldown, this means more damage or cooldown. Warp reactors will give you better maximum warp distance, phase boosters better speed. The main thing to remember is to try to make as many connections as possible (a square shape is better than a line). If you had to have a vertical line (which will be common on ships) you'd go:

Here I've again preferred cooldowns, it is my personal preference though damage may be better. The Thetas both get 2 links, Tau gets 2 links. This assumes the phase beam is in the top left and I have little flexibility in where I place upgrades.

A 3x3 grid of upgrades on the mining laser with the +3s most important to you in the middle row would be the optimal configuration. You have more flexibility on that part while most ships will have all their main parts lined up at the top. On the starship with weapons, you may need to get creative. It is one more linking bonus if the original item you're upgrading is connected to the upgrades, but it's not necessary.

Other No Man's Sky Guides

• Guide to Ships in No Man's Sky
• Making Money & Crafting for Profit in No Man's Sky
• Walkthrough Part 1: Leaving first Planet
• Walkthrough Part 2: Warp Drive
• AtlasPass V1 & Anomalies
• Finding AtlasPass V2 and V3
• Discovering Plants an Animals (Scanning)
• Antimatter
• How to Buy Better Ships
• Signal Scanners, Monoliths, Outposts, and Crashed Ships
• Best Elements to Recharge Gear
• Multi-tool and its Functions
• Mining in No Man's Sky
• Sentinels and Wanted Level
• Where to Find Better Warp Reactors