Wahey, No Man’s Sky’s Orbital update drops today, will finally let you customise your ship and explore some totally revamped space stations

If you’re a fan of cool space things and/or retro TV shows about rather tacky vehicle maintenance, here’s some good news. A fresh update for No Man’s Sky, dubbed the Orbital update, arrives today – March 27. What does it do? Well, it lets you customise your spaceship, for one.

Yup, after last month’s Omega update, which sent you on a nice expedition that kicked off on Nafut Gamma and involved unpicking “the threads of a mystery involving the past, the present, and what could be…”, this update’s a bit less cryptic, thankfully.

As outlined in the patch notes for it, it brings a hugely-requested feature to the game, in the form of “a ship editor [which] allows players to customise their ships” and “even create never before seen starship types”.

“We haven’t introduced customisation previously, because so many players love exploring to find the perfect ship already out there to purchase,” Hello Games explains, “In keeping with exploration, to customise their ship, Travellers gather and trade parts for their ships as they explore, salvaging the best components from wrecks and ruins.”

You’ll find these ship editors, which can be used to swap and switch the likes of fuselages, wings, and thrusters, inside totally revamped space stations. Following the update, the “exteriors [of these stations] are at a scale never seen before, and are hugely varied”, while their interiors have become “vast, procedurally generated, and incredibly diverse”. You can expect new shops and activities wheever you dock at one of these hangouts, each of which is now “uniquely customised based on system, race and locale”, as you can see in the trailer below.

The other big highlight is a new Guild system, designed to make joining up with one and increasing your repuation much more prominent parts of the No Man’s Sky experience. There are new Guild envoys on space stations, offering supplies, rare items, and the chance to make donations that’ll help you rise up the Guild ranks.

Also, if you’re the owner of a fleet of frigates, you can now send them away on dangerous missions that might end up leading to you having to wade in and rescue them if something goes awry. Hey, no moaning, you signed up to be a frigate captain, intergalatic babysitting’s part of the gig.

If you’re interested in more space game-related stuuf, one of Starfield’s former developers recently revealed how part of its final quest came together, highlighting the unfortunate realities if modern AAA game development in the process.