Settlements Guides

Settlements are the least understood system in No Man’s Sky, partly because the game gives you one and then largely leaves you alone with it. You become Overseer of a procedurally generated town, and from then on it generates a slow trickle of units, occasional resources, and a steady stream of decisions.

Those decisions are the actual system. Disputes, construction proposals and policy choices arrive on a timer, each with effects on happiness, productivity, maintenance cost and population. They are not cosmetic — a settlement run badly stagnates and costs more than it produces, while one run well grows and pays for itself. The catch is that the game does not clearly signal which choices trade off against which, so it is easy to optimise happiness into an unproductive town or productivity into an unhappy one.

Finding a good settlement is worth doing before investing in one. They vary in starting population, existing buildings and the frequency of problems, and Settlement Charts from a cartographer let you shop around rather than accepting the first one you find. These guides cover claiming and evaluating a settlement, the building list and what each upgrade actually does, and the policy decisions with their consequences laid out.