#Biorico Planet

[msbarrows]

I had so much fun building this base. It’s on my underwater base world, Biorico, because I love the climate and the lack of sentinels and the pretty. Also my friendly neighbourhood sandworm. I’ve now encountered other members of his (or her, or its) species on other planets, but the one on Biorico will always be THE sandworm for me, since it was my first sighting, and I have since seen it leap by me at my base there so. many. times.

Anyway, every time I end up on a reddit post when looking up anything No Man’s Sky related, one of the “other posts you might like” recommendations that pretty much always shows up is a post where some guy found a point on a planet that was pretty much perpetual sunsets and sunrises, no nights. One theory mentioned for it in the discussion was he was at his planet’s north pole, and the NMS mechanic of the sun revolving around fixed planets (because it’s simpler from a programming perspective, apparently) means that he was standing at a spot that was, essentially, getting non-stop white nights (no precession in NMS either).

Sounds neat, I thought, and decided to check one of the poles of my own favourite planet to see if I had the same effect going on. So I jumped in my starship, glanced at the compass, saw I was already facing almost due north, and went thataway. For probably a good 15-20 minutes if not longer, with occasional stops to get out and drop a marker so that if pirates interrupted my flight I could resume it from more-or-less the same place rather than restarting at some random other point on the surface (thankfully they declined to harass me, though I bet if I hadn’t been dropping markers, they would have). Crossed a lot of ocean and then several mountain ranges, and eventually hit a point high up in some mountains where the N on the compass went off to one side and the S suddenly took its place. Landed on the nearest peak, found N again, and ran that way (not very far, just down one short slope) until I found a place where the N vanished and couldn't be found, but if I took a few steps in any direction, I’d suddenly be facing S again. It was on a very pretty shelf just down from the peak, so that’s where I chose to build this base.

The lighting thing? Not so much. My theory is that the N-S axis of the planets are a little tilted in relation to the axis around which the sun rotates, so while there is a point somewhere on their surface where you can find the perpetual sunrises/sunsets effect going on, it’s not necessarily right at the poles. I did note down how long full daylight lasts at the base (according to the solar panel it’s 15 minutes) and will check my bases elsewhere on Biorico to see if they have a different length of  day, because unless I’m misremembering what very little I know about orbital mechanics, the daylight should last for different lengths of time at different points on the surface.

While I’m disappointed about not getting white nights going on, I wanted to build a base there anyway. Decided to go with an aesthetic of “someone found a ruin that was in good condition and added on to it”, so part of the building is meant to be the stone ruin, and the rest is added on with wood. Lots of expanses of glass since being at a height means it has some pretty spectacular views.

Sectioned off the bits to either side of the tower to be a bedroom (to right as you enter the tower) and office (on the left). There’s also a living room area on the right, and a kitchen/dining area on the left. Utility area down under, behind the tower stairs. There’s a patio area built out from the bridge-like part of the ruin, with great views in two directions. The little squat stone building near the tower entrance is where I put the teleporter; I find they often do poorly in elevated structures, so I wanted it as close to actual ground as I could manage. And of course I added a landing pad, as there’s very little good real estate for a ship to set down on there otherwise.

Oh, and of course my really huge friend leapt by a couple times while it was under construction, wanting to see what I was up to way up north:

[msbarrows]

Trying be more consistent in how I name bases this time around. When I mark a wrecked starship (or other point of interest) with a very basic teleporter setup, I’m marking those as a “portpoint”. Places where I’ve built a micro base (2-6 roofed over tiles) are “shelters”. More elaborate structures are “bases”. My first of anything in a new sector of the galaxy is a “foothold”.  Places I adopted a pet will be “Petname-Home”. The names are otherwise mostly a combination of the planet name, and what’s of interest there (part of the wreck’s name, or the glitch item type, resource, etc). My most ambitious structures will probably have unique names.

Been missing building actual structures, since the few things I have been building lately are almost all portpoints, so when I found a scenic mountainous desert planet that was a possibility for where to build the cliff-site base I want to do, I killed a couple of hours looking for suitable sites. No luck on finding a usable location, so I landed on several mountain peaks with good views and ran resource scans until I found one with a good deposit of copper, and then built a small base and a copper mine there. Which at least used up some of the vast overabundance of silicate powder I had cluttering up my inventory.

Late last night I finally found a planet I thought might be a possibility for my SGA-inspired Atlantis base. Sadly the “Mostly calm” weather proved to have short superheated cloud bursts, and the lighting there stains everything sepia, so I have changed my mind about its feasibility. Instead I’m using it as a practise site, to experiment with how to assemble some of the buildings I’ll eventually want on my real Atlantis base. At least I got to kill a few hours in happy base building before deciding it was a nope after all. Which also helped me make some design decisions, like that I’ll use the stone building set for the snowflake-shaped base of it (originally was using metal, which is too dark and doesn’t really show colour changes). After re-examining screenshots of Atlantis, I’ll also be having walls dropping down from the edges of the snowflake to give it the proper thickness, ending below the waterline. Might floor a section between arms to make a big shallow pool, just because I can, though mostly they look like they’re meant to be dockable areas for watercraft.

The central spire will be the biggest challenge. My initial one is completely the wrong shape and size. I think what I’m going to end up doing is a hexagonal base for it using the stone or metal building set, and then build a cuboid structure upwards from that, to get the soaring height and weirdly bulbous top. Also I’m finding the short range teleporters both useful and frustrating; useful because they allow quick point to point travel to shortcut across distances (very City of Atlantis), frustrating because they are ridiculously short range, as in relatively close line of sight on both to be able to run the connecting cable (which I also hate the visibility of). What they really need is an intermediate transfer object that you can run the cabling through so that you can link them together across more than just both-in-close-sight distances, like how I can lay a long electrical transmission wire by setting down a line of lamps or switches to run it from point to point.

And now back to searching for that elusive perfect planet (man but am I missing Biorico back in Euclid, it was a real gem of a planet).

[msbarrows]

Since heading back to Euclid I’ve had a real good run of tripping over exotic starships, including four different orange ones.

I think that yellow one may have been the one I had on my first playthrough (before twigging about the portal addresses showing up when in photo mode), as I spotted it shortly after portalling to the star system of my favourite planet from that save, Biorico, though I forget if I spotted it in that system or in one of the adjacent ones.

Also discovered to my great disappointment that even though my original save built a ton of bases in Biorico’s star system, I can’t see them at all on my current save. Boo!

[msbarrows]

Been working my way through the expedition (and mildly cursing that I didn’t figure out how to join them when the living ships one was live when I started playing, since I wouldn’t have minded getting the build/cosmetic items from it). Was aiming to work through it a phase a day, which today will be weird because I still have more pirates to kill to finish phase 3 from yesterday, but have already knocked off almost every step of phase 4, since it’s all things I’d be doing anyway. As a result I might try knocking off some of phase 5 as well.

Started out in a pretty standard small starship that I renamed the Lemon Sorbet for its colours. As soon as I thought of it (during phase 2) I sidestepped to a pirate-controlled system and grabbed the first solar ship that landed in my docking bays that I could afford and had more slots (19 as compared to 15). Named her the Bananaphone, for a combination of her also-yellow colour and because the squared off grill front always makes me think of the end of a banana.

Meanwhile over in my main save I’ve still been tweaking the Aerie, and may have found good a candidate for my Atlantis base; decided since I liked Biorico so much to go back to my original save and look up its exact star type (F9f) and start looking for that particular type in hopes of finding a planet with similarly clear lighting etc. Very first F9f I checked had a pretty nice grassy green planet with blue oceans, with decent underwater scenery. Unsure if I’ll actually use it - it does have occasional scalding cloudbursts and the lighting is a bit green - but I’ve stuck a pin in it for now (ie, found a wrecked starship to build a portpoint beside). Checking out more F9f stars first to see if any better candidates come up. Also have added checking out desert-with-ocean planets, not just temperate/grassy/paradise/etc, since I love the look of a lot of the desert biomes, and the undersea view and lighting/weather is more key anyway, given that the base will be stuck out in the middle of a lot of water.