General No Man's Sky Info
Everyone starts off on a random planet on the outside of the starting galaxy. (There has been confirmed to be multiple galaxies)
You start off with a life pod ship, without a hyperdrive. Your hyperdrive is key to getting you from star system to star system and will be how you will cover the vast majority of your distance. You can fly from star system to star system manually, but it will take a very long time.
The goal of the game is to get to the center of the universe. The game doesn't force you to go there, but many players may find interest in getting closer to the center since the closer you get, the better ships/equipment/resources you will come across. Also, the game will get harder towards the center as you'll have a higher chance of coming across more hostile/dangerous/alien planets and stronger AI ships/factions.
To make your journey to the center, you will need to continue getting better ships and upgrade your equipment as you go. To do that, you need to have units. Units are the currency in NMS, and you can get units in multiple ways:
-Discovering new species/planets through exploration and uploading them to beacons will grant you units. You have to upload them before the units are granted to you. If you die before you can upload your data, then you have to re discover those things and upload them to get units for them.
-You can get units by selling resources to space stations and trading posts, and you can combine resources to make them more lucrative. You can sell your resources to the stations in the native star system that you find them in, or you can take a risk and warp to another star system to sell your resources there where they might be more valuable and sell for higher. (I'm assuming it's that way because resource price will vary from star system to star system depending on how common the resource is in said star system) It's a risk because you could get attacked by pirates and possibly lose all of the resources are transporting, or you could get attacked by hostile animals on the search for hyperdrive fuel.
-You can also get units and resources purely by space combat and attacking trading routes/factions/freighters. You can progress all the way to the center without ever settling down on a planet that's not your starting planet.
If you die on the surface of a planet, you will respawn at your ship, but you'll lose whatever you had on you at the time. If your ship gets destroyed in space, you will land on the nearest planet with only your life pod ship and lose your cargo, but your bank account (units), multitool upgrades, and suit upgrades will still be in tact. It's always possible to work your way up from your life pod ship to a better ship with a hyperdrive no matter what star system you're in or what planet you crashed on.
You mine with your multitool. The environments are fully destructible. The multitool is used as a scanner, a weapon, and a mining tool. There are many different upgrades for it. The ones we know of so far are "laser beam, plasma grenade, energy shot, scan distance, scan type (certain things can't be scanned until this is upgraded)"
If you mess with the ecology of a planet too much, (mining, killing animals) Sentinel robots will be alerted and may attack you where you'll have to engage in combat, or you can run and hide to wait for your wanted level to go down. There is a wanted level on the top right hand corner of your screen that can go up to 5 levels. The robots are not on every planet.
There is a galactic police that will attack you and keep track of your doings in any particular sector. If you try to attack freighters or space stations, the galactic police will be alerted and try to attack you. Same thing with different factions. If you help out one faction, you will be on good terms with them and you can become affiliated with them enough to call on them as wingmen. If you oppose a faction, they'll remember that and may be hostile to you if you come across them in the future. If you consistently play as a pirate throughout multiple star systems, you will gain a status that will make you more known throughout the galaxy in general, so you could go to a completely new place and you might get attacked by space police because they are already aware of your status.
You can also upgrade your suit. The suit upgrades we know of so far are "shields, resource capacity, jetpack (height and hang time), air hazard (separate stats for toxic, corrosive and radioactive environments, liquid hazard (length of time submerged in water, acid, and alcohol)"
You can upgrade ships but it is not completely clear on how it works as of yet. The ship attributes we know of so far are "Shields, laser beams, plasma shot, rapid fire shots, energy torpedo, wing (affects maneuverability), hull (separate stats to allow landing in toxic, corrosive, and radioactive environments), engine (general speed), hyperdrive (hyperspace jump distance), cargo space (split between cargo and hyperdrive fuel), cloaking" In
this video it mentions ships having inventory slots that you can fill with upgrades to the ship, as well as cargo, and fuel which has some kind of overlap in the space they take up, so it's something that you will be managing.
There are three main classes of ships: Fighter, Trader and Explorer. Each class has multiple prototypes
-Fighters are light and symmetrical
-Trader craft tend to be bulkier and slower, but with heavier weapons
-Explorer ships will have much better hyperdrives and stealth capabilities, allowing pacifists to run from every fight
To upgrade things, you will need units. You upgrade your suit and weapons at posts/shops/stations. Different places will have different things/resources/upgrades available. You can also craft upgrades with resources you find.
A crafting system (aside from just combining resources to make them more valuable) has been mentioned. Talks about crafting things from the "atomic level" Quote below
"The game's crafting system looks set to be intrinsically complicated but rich and intentionally obscure, for instance. After mining resources in pure atomic form you can combine them into more valuable molecules, and gradually build up complex crafted material for selling, or to use to upgrade your ship, exploration suit or weapons. Hello Games will not document how this works before launch, instead -- in the style of Minecraft -- leaving it up to players to discover."
A blueprint system has also been mentioned. You can craft resources in particular ways only if you have attained the blueprint for it. Also, "loot crates" will be spread out through the galaxy that you can find as just another thing to reward you for exploration.
Planets will have a pre-generated name, but if you upload enough discoveries from one planet to a beacon, you can rename it whatever you want. You can also rename creatures you discover.
You CAN come across other players and see them, but it's extremely unlikely because of just how big the game is. There are 18 quintillion planets after all. As you get closer to the center, the chances of running into another player will increase, but it will still be a slim chance. If you do come across another real player, there will be no indication aside from your own observation. If you see a ship that's flying un-AI like, then it could be another player. If you see a person in a suit get out of a ship and walk around, then it's probably another player. Stars on the galactic map will twinkle whenever a discovery is made somewhere, so you will occasionally catch that and see where someone might be in relevance to where you're at. You can also play completely offline.
There are a good amount of other details out there that I didn't cover, but if you don't like this, the game is not for you. Here's an information archive if you're interested on reading a bit more.
http://www.reddit.com/r/NoMansSkyTheGame/wiki/archive
