No Man's Sky Frontiers update adds planetary settlements, overhauls base building

No Man's Sky fans are getting a nice surprise today, as the team at Hello Games has shipped a new update for the game. This update is called Frontiers, and it seems to make a lot of big additions to the game. Chief among those additions is a new planetary settlement system that allows players to discover settlements as they explore planets and build their own.

Players who become overseers of a settlement will call the shots, deciding which buildings to construct, where to place them, making decisions about how the settlement is operated, and defending it from sentinel attacks. In addition, players will manage the settlement and improve five key stats: productivity, population, happiness, upkeep costs, and sentinel alert levels.

Reading the full patch notes for the Frontiers update, it sounds like the settlement system is fairly well fleshed out. The ultimate goal is to advance your settlement from a small outpost with just a few buildings and residents into a technologically advanced town with happy citizens, which appears to be no small task.

Alongside these new settlement features, the Frontiers update also overhauls base building. More than 250 new base parts are included in this update – both structural and decorative – including new parts based on settlement buildings. There's also a new building grid in the base building menu that should make it easier to find the part you're looking for while showing all of the options you have available to you while building.

With several changes to placement mode – including a free placement mode that disables snapping and allows you to place base parts in mid-air – it sounds like base building should be a lot easier. While planetary settlements and the base building overhaul are unquestionably the biggest additions to this update, there's more beyond those two systems included, so check out the patch notes linked above for more on the Frontiers. The Frontiers update is live today on PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X, and Steam.