The corvette, a new, highly customizable ship class, is undoubtedly the highlight of the No Man’s Sky Voyagers update. The ship, like freighters, features a fully modular, walkable ship interior, and can be piloted around regular ships. Thanks to that design flexibility, corvettes can look like just about anything, and filling social media with hero ships recreated from other franchises. While they’re a lot of fun to scavenge parts for and to customize for hours, the ships are ill-suited for the current state of space combat in No Man’s Sky.
Currently, space battles in game resemble dog fights: spinning your ships around until the enemy pirate or sentinel is in your crosshairs and then unloading on them. Sometimes, it’s simply best to park your ship and not fire the engines, since you get a quicker turn radius. Shields are practically irrelevant so long as you keep enough sodium or starship shields on hand and quick bind the shield refill action. This means that maneuverability and damage output are the most important statistics in a No Man’s Sky space battle. This is even true in the game’s capital ship battle with the pirate dreadnaught. To defeat the dreadnaught, you need to descend below the it’s hull-hugging shields in order to damage it. And if you want to fully destroy the vessel instead of disabling it, you need to fit into the small tunnel with the shield generators. The fight, while fun, was evidently designed with small, one-manned ships in mind.
Then consider what corvettes are good at. They’re huge, have very strong shields, poor maneuverability, and few technology slots for weapons. This works fully against the style of combat described earlier. But that doesn’t have to be true forever. Corvettes can be made more relevant to existing fights with some substantial changes. Manned or automated turrets could be added that could aim ship weapons in directions other than forward. This would reduce the disadvantage of the corvette’s poor maneuverability, since the pilot could focus on evading fire without needing to face every enemy. Directional engines or afterburners could allow the ship to dodge out of harm’s way and grant more utility to additional engine modules beyond some small boost to maneuverability. Also, corvettes just need more slots for tech.
Adding and changing enemy ships in the game could also make the corvette more relevant. With the pirate dreadnaught, maybe the shield could be overpowered temporarily with enough fire, allowing more long ranged attacks. Similarly, if destroying the dreadnaught’s escort frigates could cause it to surrender, then there would be more use for vessels like the corvette. And of course, I would love some new encounters with big capital ships, ones where distance and firepower matter more than trench runs.
Nevertheless, corvettes are a great addition to No Man’s Sky. But until the game gets a combat update, the fun will be in the ship editor and part scavenging for me.
Tell us what you think! What do you want to see out of a combat update in No Man’s Sky? Share your reactions below or join the conversation on the Boss Rush Discord.
Featured Image: Hello Games
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