1.5 (30 Nov 2019), Synthesis update.

This is very likely the final update. At least for now.

Thanks to every one that checked out the guide, left a rating or a comment. And thanks to every one that will still check out the guide in it's archived state. It was/still is much appreciated.

I've spent everything I had, farmed some more, got some more nanites and the results are pretty much what I expected and it's good.

It cost me 390 million to max out the Radiant Pillar as a C class ship. The upgrade to B class was 10000 nanites. And it opened up extra inventory slots to purchase. My guess is that when you max out the ship class, every ship, regardless of it's visuals and parts, will have 48 storage slots and 21? (I don't think it's going to be more than that) Technology slots. The prices for better class ships and Exotics are huge and it's going to take you a lot of money and nanites to upgrade something from C up to max S, but for all the ship enthusiasts this is awesome as you have some kind of a very long term goal besides constantly building bases.

The money is not much of a problem to make when you get everything set up, but the large amount of nanites needed will be a slow process.

This is an amazing update and one that was sorely needed. I hope that one day it will be possible to visually alter the ships with parts, something I've already mentioned in my ramblings in this guide. Kudos to Hello Games for making this happen.

The search for a direct S class starship described in this guide should still work and yes, if you can find one you like, it will save you a lot of time and money, but it might not be the one you like visually. And as the Dark Souls community knows, fashion is important.

I will be archiving this guide as of today, 30 November 2019. I might update some things sporadically as I play the game, just to correct some incosistencies in the descriptions and numbers for ships, but I will leave the rest pretty much as it is, as a memento of ship searching days.

Again, thanks to every one that checked out the guide, left a rating or a comment. And thanks to every one that will still check out the guide in it's archived state. Now, go chart an infinite universe and find a way to make a ton of money quickly in some of the guides available on Steam.

Archived on 30 November 2019 with the Synthesis update.

Get an Economy Scanner, find a wealthy system (Advanced, Affluent, Booming, Flourishing, High Supply, Opulent, Prosperous, Wealthy), use the Economy Scanner from space to find a Trading post on a planet, land there, whenever you load the game while at the Trading post, it spawns random ships that land, you can scan them while they’re in the air unless they’ve already started their landing animation, if no S class ship spawns, load game, rinse and repeat until you get an S class ship.

More collected info, personal thoughts from my experience and ramblings.




It is highly recommended to look for S class ships in a wealthy system (Advanced, Affluent, Booming, Flourishing, High Supply, Opulent, Prosperous, Wealthy), since they have a higher chance of spawning an S class.
I did find some arguments in a few places that conclude the system wealth only affects the chance of spawning an Exotic, not an S class, but I don’t know if that can be confirmed.

Beyond update, still the same, all large ships (max storage and technology slots) spawn with the same ship features so you’ll recognize them easily.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1581095298
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1570613128
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1572111793
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1579281403
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597221812

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1572345679
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1579283786
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1581098000
*there are a few of them, you can't miss them, they're strikingly different than other ships

Not every system spawns a large ship and it doesn’t always seem to be best to look for a ship you like in a system that spawns 7 ships of that class.

Example: I’ve found Vy’Keen systems that didn’t spawn a single large class fighter and I’ve found Korvax and Gek systems that frequently did spawn one. It pays to take a look at every wealthy system.


Every Gek system has 7 Haulers, 3 Explorers and 3 Fighters.
Every Korvax system has 7 Explorers, 3 Haulers and 3 Fighters.
Every Vy’Keen system has 7 Fighters, 3 Haulers and 3 Explorers.
Exotics seem to spawn as an extra slot regardless of the dominant system species, but from the info I found, not every system will have an Exotic. And it would seem that if a system has an Exotic, it will spawn in around 30 reloads.
All systems spawn an exorbitant amount (read: 7, but it feels like an endless tide) of crappy Shuttles which will, maybe, be mentioned again somewhere in the guide. But probably not.


Amount of credits required for a direct purchase without exchanging your current ship.

Large S class Fighters are 57,500,000 units, 38+12 slots.
Large S class Haulers are 126,000,000 units, 48+8 slots.
Large S class Explorers are 39,000,000 units, 38+12 slots.
Exotics are 12,000,000 units, 20+6 slots.


Before you start farming, you’ll need a few ship upgrades and the credits mentioned above if you're not exchanging anything. Economy Scanner is needed to easily locate a Trading post on a planet and the Hyperdrive upgrades are not really required, but they do make it easier to reach any wealthy system. If you don't have them you can't reach red, green and blue star systems.

Ship upgrades:

• Economy Scanner (150 nanites to research in The Nexus (Teleport Reciever research required before, 150 nanites), 5 Microprocessors, 1 Wiring Loom)
  
• Cadmium Drive (80 nanites to research in The Nexus, 250 Chromatic Metal, 3 Wiring Loom)
  
• Emeril Drive (120 nanites to research in The Nexus, 250 Cadmium, 4 Wiring Loom)
  
• Indium Drive (200 nanites to research in the Nexus, 250 Emeril, 5 Wiring Loom)

When you find a wealthy system, use the Economy Scanner from space to locate a Trading post on a planet and go land there. Since the game autosaves when you exit the ship, you’re all set when you land. Time to start looking at the sky. You can immediately reload the game so it spawns new ships or you can check the wave that lands. It’s easy to detect and scan ships in the air unless they’ve already started their landing animation. If the ship you want hasn’t spawned, just reload the game. Trading posts seem to have a pseudo RNG seed system in place and each load will spawn different ships based on 21 ships already determined when the system was generated.
If you count the different ship types and it turns out no large class of a ship you want has spawned and you’ve reached the max number of ships for that class (3 haulers, 3 fighters...), you can safely move to another system.


Space station farming works a bit differently. The order of arriving ships seems to be locked, probably on your first time entering the station, but I don't know for sure. And everytime you load, the ship order is the same. I did notice some slight variations after repeated loadings. It's also slower since the ships need some time to land and you can't scan them in the air.
The Space station is a good spot if a ship you want always appears in the first or second wave. I ran into a Korvax station that had a large fighter that always appeared like that. That might be faster than a Trading post for getting that particular ship.

Some reloading numbers just to give a perspective on how it works. These numbers are not set in stone and may vary due to the nature of NMS's procedural generation.

30 reloads, Vy'Keen system with 2 large Fighters:
17 times at least one of the fighters spawned, 1 S class spawn, no Exotic.

30 reloads, Gek system with 1 large Hauler:
6 large Hauler spawns, 1 S class spawn, 1 Exotic spawn.
*since the Gek system has 7 different Haulers, this reduced the chance of the specific Hauler spawning. If that Hauler was in a Vy'Keen or a Korvax system, it would have probably spawned more times.

50 reloads, Korvax system with 1 large Fighter:
16 large Fighter spawns, no S class spawn, 1 Exotic spawn.
*I'm going to start guessing that if a system has an Exotic it will appear in around 30 reloads.



2 Medium wealth systems, 2 High wealth systems, 1st wave, 30 reloads.


As in Space station farming the reduction in C class and the increases in B and A for the High wealth systems are noticeable. But this time the Medium supply systems also spawned S class ships.
The High supply system spawned a large amount of S class ships for 30 reloads, 7, the highest I've seen since I've started testing.
These numbers would seem to indicate that even Medium wealth systems are good enough to farm an S class, but the sample of systems is too small to say that with certainty.
If this confirms anything it's that the Trading posts really are much better farming spots than Space stations.


2 Medium Wealth systems, 1 High Wealth system, 1st wave, 30 reloads.


The reduction in C class in a Wealthy system is very obvious, as are the increases in B, A and the appearance of 2 S class starships.
This doesn't actually prove anything statistically yet, that would require much more numbers and a larger system sample.

Thanks to Gamerfss86 and his guide that actually pushed me to look at the ship spawning and farming.
Check out his guide for Freighter farming.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1477307060
Info collected from personal experience, Reddit, GameFAQs, No Man's Sky Wiki and some Steam Community discussions.
If anyone has anything to add or say, feel free to add a comment or send me a message.

Warning: may contain opinions

I saw a post on reddit some time ago that said it's interesting that the save/reload mechanic became such an emergent gameplay choice that Hello games probably never anticipated or wanted. They wanted getting an S class ship to be a rare and organic event.

Maybe? The players are definitely gaming the system with the save/reload mechanic. But doesn't that point to a lack of some kind of gameplay mechanic, a kind of natural progression, a path to getting the best ship you can and that you like instead of just reloading over and over?
I know that S class ships are not supposed to be easy to find, but the current system of reloading a save 72 times (that's tied to pseudo RNG, seeds, and whatnot, there's a ton of threads on various communities about that) to get an S class is a bit tedious.

And when you finally find it, since NEXT, all end game S class ships (max slots) are basically the same. Max slot parts are prominent and occupy so much of the ship's visual look that the other parts somehow lose their distinction. Every fighter has the side fuselage, every hauler has the side pods and so on for the other ships. If you want a max slot ship, you're stuck with those parts.

It's been suggested to death, but imagine if you could combine all the different modular parts and actually make something of your own. They could make it expensive, extremely expensive if needed, but that would be a great way to add another goal to end game and one more thing to work towards. It would even be viable upgrading the Radiant Pillar into something wildly different, but probably a lot more expensive that finding a new ship. They could even make the slots upgradeable (just like with the suit) as you upgrade the parts. Maybe scanning the ships you encounter through the galaxy would add parts to your blueprints that you could build (easy way to make the cost expensive in materials). Even needing to own/have owned the ships with different parts to make them available for blueprints would work. Slap some paints and decals (same system for the suit and you've already got that for the land vehicles) at the end, and you've got the makings of a ship workshop.

There are some really amazing ships out there, like this one found by Enkidu98. Absolutely amazing large stub fighter design. Wouldn't it be nice if you could actually get to this on your own instead of waiting for Lady Luck to spawn you one?

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1627315964
There will always be an argument that you don't need to save/reload, that you can just play the game, explore and stumble upon an S class ship and it will be organic. And I kind of get that.

In the end, I don't think Hello Games will ever implement any ship modifying, but it's always nice to dream.

Or, you know, you can always just use the save editor which, by just casually browsing the discussions on Steam, you may notice a lot of people use.

Upgrades on the ships are still random in the Beyond update, but since you can now move technology from slot to slot, there's no need to dismantle it and build again to get synergies. Found at least 1 of each (Fighter, Explorer, Hauler) in the Beyond update, max Exotic left to find. I'll add a few more duplicate classes as I find them, just to have a few.
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1848667054
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1846020749
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1854787746
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1572361375
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1590613588
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1597225004

Ships found by players
Beyond update
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1838749100