Natural Flight

Natural Flight is an overhaul of the flight mechanics for No Man’s Sky. It changes it from the easy, arcade style flight to a more challenging simulation style of gameplay. I was aiming to modify the flight, docking and planetary landings to be more like the original Elite and Elite Frontier from the 1980s and 1990s.

WARNING: Do not use this with Permadeath mode unless you try it out on a normal game save first, as it does increase the challenge of flying and docking, and increases damage with collisions. IT IS MUCH EASIER TO DIE.

Features:
No automatic reverse thrusters. (You need to slow down or you’ll crash.)
Your ship has momentum. (You will keep going in the same direction no matter what angle you aim your ship, unless you apply additional thrust in the reverse/different direction.)
You can turn your ship to fire in any direction, while retaining your original trajectory.
You can travel faster in space, and reverse thrusters are not designed for fast speeds. (To slow down quickly, you need to turn your whole ship around and fire your boosters. The reverse thrusters are designed only for slow speeds, such as when docking.)
Colliding with space stations, planets, asteroids or other obstacles will really damage your ship. (Your ship can be destroyed in a single collision in some cases.)
No safeguards when flying low on a planet. (You can fly very low while in a planets atmosphere, which means you need to watch where you’re going, or you’ll crash.)
You can fly much faster when in a planets atmosphere. (Just because you CAN fly faster, doesn’t mean you SHOULD. It can be very dangerous.)
When approaching a planet or station using the Pulse Engine, you exit the pulse jump at a very fast speed. (If you exit too close to the planet, or on too steep an angle, you can find yourself decorating the planets/stations surface.)
Docking is more challenging. (The new physics makes it harder, but the auto landing mechanism will only kick in when you approach the station at an appropriate angle and at a slow speed. Be careful, because you can die quite easily when trying to dock.)
Reduced number of asteroids, but greater rewards from mining them.
Asteroids are dangerous to collide with.
You can initiate Pulse Jumps from within the high altitudes of a planets atmosphere, or closer to the space stations.
Probably a few other small adjustments that I can’t recall at the moment.

Compatibility

The current version will work with No Man’ Sky Visions 1.77.

(I haven’t tested it with earlier versions)

Files Modified

GCSOLARGENERATIONGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN

GCSPACESHIPGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN

PROJECTILETABLE.MBIN

DAMAGETABLE.MBIN

Thank you to:
Tub0Crisco for continued work on NMS Modding Station
MONKEYMAN192 for continued work on MBIN Compiler

Installation
Unzip the file
Drag the file “_NaturalFlight0.1.pak” into your No Man’s Sky mods folder.
Play the game

Changelog

0.21

a) Removed some minor tweaks I had made to non-flight related matters, therefore removing the need for the inclusion of the following files, and improving compatibility with other mods.

Removed:

GCGAMEPLAYGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN

GCPLAYERGLOBALS.GLOBAL.MBIN

Thanks to chamile for the suggestion.

b) Made docking slightly easier, as I often found myself unable to locate the “sweet spot” for the stations tractor beam. It’s still harder than vanilla.

Credits:

Buckaroo_Banzai68