If you’ve ever stumbled across a sleek S-class fighter mid-exploration only to realize you don’t want to give up your hauler that holds 120 units of storage, you’ve probably asked: can you have multiple ships in No Man's Sky? I’ve spent over 300 hours roaming the galaxy, and I remember exactly how frustrated I was when I first thought I was stuck with the beat-up starter ship forever. This guide breaks down everything you need to know about unlocking, storing, and using extra ships, plus common mistakes new players make when building their fleet.
Can You Have Multiple Ships in No Man's Sky? The Short Official Answer
Yes, the base game fully supports owning multiple ships without any mods or third-party tools. You start with one ship slot, and can unlock up to 9 total slots for regular playable ships, plus a separate slot for your freighter and up to 30 frigate slots for your freighter fleet. I unlocked my second ship after 12 hours of play, and it completely changed how I approached resource runs, since I could leave my hauler parked at a trading post while I zipped around in a fighter to clear pirate ambushes.
You don’t lose any ships you purchase or claim unless you explicitly choose to scrap or trade them, so you don’t have to worry about accidental deletions when you pick up a new model. You can switch between any of your owned ships at any time when you’re at a space station, freighter, or player-built landing pad, and you can even summon ships to a planet’s surface if you have a landing spot available, for a small tritium fee. If you’re someone who bounces between mining, combat, and exploration every session, having multiple ships in No Man's Sky means you never have to compromise on loadouts.
How to Unlock Extra Ship Slots for Your Fleet
Unlocking extra ship slots is straightforward, no story milestones or complicated quests required. You can buy extra slots from the ship upgrade terminal at any major space station, with costs increasing as you unlock more slots. The first extra slot costs 500,000 units, the second 1 million units, and the final ninth slot costs 35 million units, for a total of roughly 120 million units to unlock all slots. That sounds like a lot at first, but you can easily earn that much mid-game by trading rare activated resources or scrapping unwanted high-class ships.
Once you have empty slots, you can fill them with ships from a few different sources:
- Purchase ships from NPC pilots landing at space stations, trading posts, or your freighter hangar, with prices varying based on class, slot count, and model type
- Claim crashed ships you find while exploring planets, which only require repair of their core systems to add to your fleet for free
- Earn exclusive limited-edition ships as rewards for completing seasonal expeditions or main story milestones
- Trade in your existing ship for a discount on a new model if you don’t want to keep your old one and don’t have an extra empty slot
Crashed S-class ships are the most cost-effective way to build a high-end fleet, since you only need to repair their launch thrusters and pulse engine to fly them, rather than paying tens of millions of units for a brand new one from an NPC. I found an S-class hauler on a frozen planet last year that would have cost 45 million units at a space station, and I only spent 20,000 units worth of ferrite and di-hydrogen to fix it up.
Best Practices for Managing Multiple Ships
It’s easy to hoard every cool ship you find, but a disorganized fleet will cause more headaches than it solves. I recommend assigning a specific role to each ship in your fleet so you always know which one to grab for any task. For example, I keep one max-storage hauler for mining runs, one high-damage fighter for pirate and sentinel battles, one long-jump-range explorer for galaxy hopping, one small shuttle for quick supply runs, and one exotic ship just for showing off to friends in multiplayer.
You can rename each ship and customize their paint jobs to tell them apart easily, I color code mine: dark blue for my hauler, bright red for my fighter, neon green for my explorer, so I can spot the one I need at a glance in the hangar. Always park your most frequently used ships at your freighter so you can access them anywhere in the galaxy, no matter what system you’re in. If you leave a ship on a random planet, you can still summon it to any landing pad, but it costs a small amount of tritium to do so, so it’s better to keep them on your freighter if you use them often.
Don’t be afraid to scrap ships you don’t use anymore. When you scrap a ship at a space station, you get back a portion of the units you paid for it, plus all the upgrades installed on it, plus useful resources like platinum and chromatic metal. I scrapped three low-class fighters last month and got enough nanites to fully upgrade my S-class explorer’s hyperdrive range, pushing it to over 3,000 light years per jump. Last week I was doing a run for activated indium, I left my hauler parked next to my mining outpost so I could make three trips back and forth with my fighter to carry loads of indium back, cutting my mining time in half since I didn’t have to fly all the way to the space station every time my inventory filled up.
Common Misconceptions About Owning Multiple Ships
There are a lot of outdated myths floating around from No Man’s Sky’s early access days that still confuse new players. The biggest myth I see is that you need mods to own more than two ships. That was true back in 2016, but the base game has supported up to 9 owned ships for years now, so you don’t need any external tools to build your fleet. The only time you need mods is if you want more than 9 ships, but that’s not supported in vanilla, and can cause save corruption if you’re not careful.
Another common myth is that you have to pay upkeep costs for multiple ships. There’s no monthly fee, no repair costs for keeping ships parked, no hidden charges of any kind. You only pay once for the slot and the ship itself, and you can keep it forever for free. A lot of new players also think you have to complete the main Artemis story to unlock extra slots, but that’s not true either. You don’t have to complete the main story to unlock extra ship slots, you can start buying extra slots as soon as you have enough units, even five hours into a new save.
One last myth I see often is that you can’t use your own ships when playing multiplayer with friends. You absolutely can summon any of your owned ships when you’re in a friend’s system, so you can bring your fighter to help them take down a pirate fleet, or your hauler to help them carry resources for a big base build. You can’t claim each other’s ships, but you can show off your rare models and help each other hunt for new ships to add to your own fleets.
At the end of the day, the answer to can you have multiple ships in No Man's Sky is a resounding yes, and it’s one of the best quality of life features the game has added over its years of updates. You don’t have to be an endgame player to build a fleet that fits your playstyle, even new players can unlock a second ship within a few hours of starting their save. Take time to test different ship types, find ones that fit what you love doing in the galaxy, and don’t be afraid to scrap ships that don’t work for you. I still swap out ships every few weeks when I find a cooler model, and my fleet has made every part of exploring the galaxy more fun.
