Free Lanes + Terran Armarda

[DocClox]

Anyone else looked at the trailers for these yet? It actually looks like Beth have actually been listening. Cruise mode between planets; an in-game database of outposts, resources and discoveries; upgrading Starborn powers with Quantum Essence so you don't need to do240 temples...

 

Call me naive, but I find myself looking forward to this one.  

[pr0nsax]

I think it looks great. Only thing I'm missing is bigger ships I think (and well, a better main story but that's too much work to expect that it would change). 

 

Remember that Free Lanes is literally a free update, and Terran Armada is included if you have premium edition (including the premium edition upgrade), so it's not particularly expensive either.

[travelmedic]

If the update goes well, it might finally be time for me to get back to Starfield.

 

I had logged about 470 hours in the game and never even got to the Unity even once, but did spend a lot of time grinding for achievements.  Unfortunately I hit a roadblock on the main quest due to a bug and couldn't finish it, and (it was my own fault for bringing a companion on a stealth mission) got kicked out of the UC(?) questline after getting into combat with a bunch of innocents.

 

It seems like a lot of the bugs are fixed now, and I'd like to try both Shattered Space and the new DLC too.  Plus maybe a couple of the Creations.

[imafaget]

Ngl a lot of the 'new' features should've been in the base game at launch, but better late than never I suppose. We also need to remember that Beth is a master at marketing, it's how so many people got suckered into buying Starfield at launch then being burned (including myself). Nonetheless, I'll probably be trying it again after not playing since launch, especially since I have the premium edition, I should have all the new content free, I think.

[DocClox]

23 hours ago, imafaget said:

Ngl a lot of the 'new' features should've been in the base game at launch

 

Not going to argue, but from a glass-half-full perspective, at least they've patched almost every complaint I had about the game.

 

I just wish they weren't so determined to control and monetize the modding scene. Oh well, one miracle at a time, I suppose...

[JB.]

I'm really looking forward to it! I ended up liking the game even though there are still some things that make me grit my teeth. Yesterday I did one of those new bounty hunter mission and it was spectacular; I hope that same tone continues in the DLCs. And if they fix the magnifying glass for finding materials, even better. 

 

Oddly enough, I like to keep everything small and comfy. Small ship, small house, crew of two. I'm not into mansions or super ships. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[slimbones]

The biggest thing still missing is Procedural POI's or at least modular random layouts. No matter how many POI's. Still going to be seeing the same POI's with the exact same layout, enemies and loot placement.   They could have basically take some of the modules and design a few dozen layouts. Then connect them where they logically make sense. And maybe add in some random/radiant events like prisoners.
Adding a buggy and making travel more immersive is cool but not improving the poi's so there is level of unknown to them will not improve exploration. Just going to a poi to kill the same copypasted pirates/eclipse mercs that fight exactly the same is not going to help.  

[Jarnin]

On 3/20/2026 at 4:43 PM, slimbones said:

The biggest thing still missing is Procedural POI's or at least modular random layouts. No matter how many POI's. Still going to be seeing the same POI's with the exact same layout, enemies and loot placement. 

 

The surface of a planet in Starfield is - basically - one of these, but with more numbers available. Each time a surface map is generated the procedural system picks a bunch of cells to plop down next to each other, and then fixes up the edges so everything is contiguous and the seams are all hidden. In other words, Bethesda's procedural system in Starfield isn't complex enough to do what you want it to do. It swaps around terrain tiles, it can't build structures out of modular pieces like a player does in the ship builder.

 

From what I've read, Bethesda has added "many" new points of interest to the game in the new update, as well as adding new Terran Armada POIs to the DLC. The new rover is obtained by finding it at one of these new POI's, so explorating is required to obtain it. They've also (supposedly) reworked a lot of how the procedural system chooses (and filters) which cells it will place when generating a surface map, so that repeats and doubles aren't as common (something that modders did years ago).

 

Personally, I think this update looks quite good, but it also looks like they held back from releasing everything they've developed over the last 18 months so they could dump it all on us at once. Phil Spencer questioned whether they should have done this with the releases in 2024, so to see that's exactly what they did this time around pisses me off. It looks like a lot of content, but if you were to spread it out over 18 months it wouldn't look so great. Still, it's nice that I'm getting more value out of my premium edition purchase. I wasn't expecting the new DLC to be included in that purchase.

[RohZima]

I'm happy about it. The Terran Armada faction look a bit corny but I don't really care. Just glad there will be some new features. Hopefully everything goes smoothly. Starfield will have one more player spike with the ps launch and the new content. Will be great for the PS players too, they will have so many mods to discover after playing the game and DLC's.

[Jarnin]

I started a new character (bounty hunter) yesterday when the content dropped, and have gotten her up to level 16 or there about. After getting through the intro (again), I was able to start flying around the system to check out the Free Lanes part of the update.

 

Spoiler

It's about what I expected. It's not very immersive. Your ship has four "grav gears" that it switches to as you travel away from a planet or moon. 1st gear is good for tooling around, 2nd gear is good for traveling between a planet's orbit and one of its moons. 3rd gear is good for traveling between planets in a system's core. 4th gear is good for getting out to the outer planets in a system. Boost exists, though it tends to act wonky; activating it will often shoot you way past your target if you're in a lower gear (I think it shoots you into full speed 4th gear), and autopilot has troubles correcting your course if you're coming close to your target (like boosting away from the planet to go to a moon, for example).

 

The stuff you can find in space is mostly recycled. I found like two dozen things just tooling around, which made me think they were spawning way, way, way too frequently (unless they added like a hundred new encounters in Free Lanes + Terran Armada, which I doubt). I've run into stuff where it certainly should not be. Bethesda is still putting clusters of asteroids in orbit of planets and moons, so you end up coming out of the fast lane and a cloud of mountains pops into your field of vision (asteroid belts / fields need to be a thing so I don't have my immersion blown every other time I visit a planet or moon). They made a clone of Grandma, called "Old Lady" who has a similar schitck as Grandma, but creepier. Bethesda is really leaning into the "space horror" in Starfield.

 

There is now ship loot obtained from looting enemy ships! They added equipment schematics that can drop when you kill enemy ships. So far I've gotten about ten or so; they're all common quality, so I don't know if there are upgrades or not. They attach to empty weapon mounts, so a large ship will be able to sport quite a few, if not all of them. They don't require power, all cost about 10k credits, and seem to have 3 mass. They do stuff like add +1 power, potentially ricochet shots back at enemies, causes enemies to take 20% longer to get a lock on your ship, and give your ship a cloaking effect when you boost (it makes no sense, but whatever).

 

Character items can be upgraded. Everything is done from the suit or weapon workbenches (which I'm not a fan of), and requires no crafting skills (which I'm also not a fan of). It seems to be mostly a credit sink (which I am a fan of). I was able to upgrade my lowbie Mantis armor from no quality qualifier to refined for 30k. Adding / changing / gambling on legendary effects costs X-Tech, which is about as rare as Astra and found in the same way (board and plunder those enemy ships, matey's).

 

The low-rent astromech droid, Model G, can be found in The Well. It seems to be a pet that has some crew skills, which is neat. It doesn't really fight; it rolls up to an enemy and bumps into it, then rolls away. You can change its color from "rust" to "pink" to "red", and you can change its personality across like six different variants. It reminds me a bit of the Servitron mod for Fallout 4, where you could select the robot's personality, which would determine which default human animations it used. Model G is kind of neat, and I'm sure Bethesda added that framework so modders could go nuts selling Starfield astromechs for 5 bucks a pop. I mean, who wouldn't want a robot that can improve or repair your ship systems while also finding scrap on the regular? Alas, M-6 doesn't roll around my ship in space. It seems to disappear in the same way that Vasco does; into the invisible "robotic crew compartment".

 

I haven't gotten into Terran Armada stuff, except to say that it triggered. What's kind of infuriating is that it (and Shattered Space) triggered for my character at level 9, but the quests for both DLC are 35+ and 50+ for TA. Why have them trigger at level 9(ish) if the recommended levels are 35 and 50? I mean, I get that some players are like, "you can't tell me not to try it at level 1", and that's fine, but having the Oracle jump into Codos orbit (Codos being the moon of Akila, the capital planet of the Freestar Collective) just to have the entire Freestar Navy not respond is... weird. Immersion breaking, even.

 

Overall, without spoilers, I'd say the Free Lanes content is B-/C+ content. Not awesome, not great, but nice. It uses a lot of the vanilla orbital encounters to pad out the newer Free Lanes encounters, and those vanilla encounters still happen, but overall I'd say space feels bigger and there's a lot more to do within a system (which was desperately needed).

 

 

Edited April 8 by Jarnin

[chelzmcnamara]

are modders gonna finally drop skyrim and start modding this game for once?

[nIn nIn nIn]

Be careful with the free lanes encounters. Asteroid fields contain objects with red lights that cannot be targeted. They go BOOM if you get to close. They hide behind asteroids.

 

It's a great little easter egg. Nearly killed me when I first saw the lights and went to investigate.

[DocClox]

Yeah, minefields. They were around before the update, but it was fairly rare.

 

One thing I learned the hard way: if you see an icon like the flashing light on top of an emergency vehicle, it doesn't mean SOS, it means Hazard. Specifically one of those asteroid/mine  fields. Figured this out after my ship suffered a sudden unplanned disassembly on the way to investigate one such item. 

[Jarnin]

Regarding minefields: I ran into a vanilla encounter with a guy asking me to recover some data from a probe that is surrounded by mines. I put Sarah's stealth lesson into play: Dropped power to all systems except engines, which I set to one bar. Then I slowly crept into the mine field using thrusters to avoid any that got too close for comfort. Got the data, then crept back out. You might want to keep that in mind if you guys are running into new missions or encounters with mines.

[nIn nIn nIn]

You can shoot the mines and blow them up. Can't use E to select as a target, but that isn't necessary - fly SLOOOW and use your ships gun reticle. Move the mouse around to fine tune your aim.

 

It was the surprise butt seks that caught me out first time. Barely survived with less than 5% hp.

[sen4mi]

On 3/19/2026 at 7:02 AM, DocClox said:

I just wish they weren't so determined to control and monetize the modding scene. Oh well, one miracle at a time, I suppose...

 

That's a surprisingly complex topic. 

 

On one hand, modding support has been a significant part of the success of their games.

 

On another hand, modding support has been a significant cost for them in developing their games. And they like supplying their employees enough money so that they can eat food and have a place to sleep and so on. And I guess they want to extend some of these benefits to some of the modders - especially the good ones.

 

 On another hand, the modding community has been inclusive enough to attract people actively hostile to Bethesda. Some of that is because of game problems, but some of it seems philosophical or maybe even personal.

 

And on another other hand, there's probably people within Bethesda (and/or people they listen to) who are similarly hostile to the modding community. (Perhaps motivated by bugs, philosophy and/or personal history.)

 

And four handed is four armed, or something like that. But the real point is that some of this helps keep the modding community alive but some of it pushes a wedge between Bethesda's games and modding support.

 

Or... it's complicated.

 

Oh well.

 

Edit:

On 3/23/2026 at 7:35 AM, Jarnin said:

 

The surface of a planet in Starfield is - basically - one of these, but with more numbers available. Each time a surface map is generated the procedural system picks a bunch of cells to plop down next to each other, and then fixes up the edges so everything is contiguous and the seams are all hidden. In other words, Bethesda's procedural system in Starfield isn't complex enough to do what you want it to do. It swaps around terrain tiles, it can't build structures out of modular pieces like a player does in the ship builder.

 

That's pretty accurate, but it's also worth noting that the surface of a planet is completely deterministic. If you can land on the same pixel on a map that someone else landed on, you get the same tiles that they had (with possible exceptions from updated game version and/or mods).

 

In other words, if Bethesda can address some hazardous game engine issues, you could, hypothetically speaking, eventually walk or drive all the way around a planet (assuming no unpassable terrain blocking you from doing so).

 

(One of those hazardous game engine issues though is that the map is square and planets are spherical. And mapping square tiles onto a sphere is ... ouchy. In other words, a project big enough that it would probably be worth investing ten years into developing it into a new game and putting it into a parallel universe - or collection of parallel universes - where they also incorporate a lot of fallout backstory, meaning an earth that kind of survived. (Though of course, once the playable space is huge like this, game mechanisms would need to keep things fun even when the player is completely lost.))

 

Further edit (to get back on topic): a "solution" for the lack of content variance here could be to procedurally generate POIs (and then maybe review them and toss the ones which seem wrong). We might call that "cached procedural generation" or something like that?

 

Though if someone was really ambitious, I suppose a full procedural generation system (keyed off of location, and with repeatable probabilities which were hopefully fun to play) could be implemented and hooked into the game's terrain loading system, I imagine.

Edited April 17 by sen4mi

[DocClox]

On 4/16/2026 at 11:32 PM, sen4mi said:

And on another other hand, there's probably people within Bethesda (and/or people they listen to) who are similarly hostile to the modding community. (Perhaps motivated by bugs, philosophy and/or personal history.)

 

I think that's undoubtedly true. Let's face it, it was a wild idea to begin with: "hey, let's just give our entire development toolset to the users and see what they do with it!" If Morrowind hadn't been Make Or Break for Bethesda, they'd probably never have done it.

 

That said, I think they're going to kill the hobby and much of the appeal of their games. What they're going to wind up with are a couple of satellite studios that  occasionally make small DLC for them, and a boatload of low effort grifters and not much in between. But you can't put a RoI on fan engagement, so ...

 

Ah well, they got bought by Microsoft. It was only a matter of time before all the fun got sucked out of the brand.

 

On 4/8/2026 at 7:12 PM, Jarnin said:

Overall, without spoilers, I'd say the Free Lanes content is B-/C+ content. Not awesome, not great, but nice.

 

I have to say, it's growing on me by leaps and bounds. At the start, I was thinking "it's like walking in Skyrim. Good for immersion or the occasional quest, but in practice I'm going to fast travel most places".

 

As I get used to the interface though, I'm using it more and more. Once you get the hang of it, it probably doesn't use much more time than fast traveling did. Meanwhile, some of the encounters are fun and there's something satisfying about seeing a planet zoom up to fill the screen that you just didn't get from a cut-scene,

 

All very subjective, of course

Edited April 18 by DocClox

[Djlegends]

11 hours ago, DocClox said:

 

I think that's undoubtedly true. Let's face it, it was a wild idea to begin with: "hey, let's just give our entire development toolset to the users and see what they do with it!" If Morrowind hadn't been Make Or Break for Bethesda, they'd probably never have done it.

 

That said, I think they're going to kill the hobby and much of the appeal of their games. What they're going to wind up with are a couple of satellite studios that  occasionally make small DLC for them, and a boatload of low effort grifters and not much in between. But you can't put a RoI on fan engagement, so ...

 

Ah well, they got bought by Microsoft. It was only a matter of time before all the fun got sucked out of the brand.

 

 

I have to say, it's growing on me by leaps and bounds. At the start, I was thinking "it's like walking in Skyrim. Good for immersion or the occasional quest, but in practice I'm going to fast travel most places".

 

As I get used to the interface though, I'm using it more and more. Once you get the hang of it, it probably doesn't use much more time than fast traveling did. Meanwhile, some of the encounters are fun and there's something satisfying about seeing a planet zoom up to fill the screen that you just didn't get from a cut-scene,

 

All very subjective, of course

same man i'm actually getting sucked into the game now and i just want more mods to expand the "meta" whatever that is... currently using starvalor and RBT mods its been a trip man xD

[sen4mi]

I dunno - even Microsoft has a huge investment in supporting modders (also known as "developers").

[Jarnin]

I'm like 90% sure that the new robot companion, Model G, cannot interact with doors. I used it as a companion for about 45 levels, and its gotten lost, or stuck behind a closed door about 70% of the time I'm running through a POI. If I jump up a level it can't seem to follow. I don't think it can't jump at all, and has no boost mechanism since boost is tied to jumping. Also, its scavenging skill is broken; I've never received any junk items from it in the ~72 hours I've put into my bounty hunter. Not like I need the junk items, but when a thing comes with a feature, I expect it to have been tested and guaranteed to work 😐

 

I did finally figure out how to get Model G on my ship; dismiss as a companion and then swap your home ship to a different ship and back. The thing is, MG can't open doors or climb ladders, so if you have a multiple level ship with lots of habs, you'll probably never see the little dude. He'll get stuck somewhere, and since there's really no purpose to having a big ship, there's really no reason to go running around looking for it. If you have a big crew I suppose one of them might open a door for it.

 

I really need to finish up these dumb tracker alliance quests and dive into Terran Armada content: The game is beginning to bore me again, probably because I'm working on some skills with challenges that are dumb as fuck: "Expend 100% of your O2 while encumbered 170 times"

 

So, they want me to load up on resources and jump into the air 170 times, but I have to wait for ~20 seconds between each jump so I can refill my O2. Just finished rank 2, and OMG this is fucking stupid. The amount of stupid baked into the skill challenges is just too damn high! I mean, piloting: "Kill a bunch of enemies to get better at flying your ship". What does combat have to do with flying a ship? Shouldn't the challenge be something like, "Land or dock your ship a bunch of times"? Combat is already required for offensive and defensive system skills, and rightfully so... why is combat the fall-back for all of the challenges? Either straight up "kill shit" or "take damage". I mean, I want to get Acrobatics next, and that's "take damage while encumbered", so back to jumping into the air while overloaded. IIRC, the second tier changes the challenge to killing enemies in zero-g, which is OK, I guess, but it still condenses into, "kill shit or take damage".

 

Bruce Nesmith devised the skill system in Starfield. It's functional, but it is not fun.

 

EDIT: I just watched Model G try to roll through a ladder for a solid minute.

Edited April 19 by Jarnin

[brown66]

I'm still playing Terra Armada and decided to take a break and play the Help Wanted mission. Very, very good! Except for Two Cities, Two Tales, it's perhaps the best Starfield mission for me.

 

Without meaning to offend anyone, whoever wrote this quest must be Jewish. I deduce this from the references to Sinar (Shinar, in the game) and especially Clarice Lispector (if my memory serves me right, in the game she is referred to as Clarice Inspector).

Edited April 19 by brown66

[Djlegends]

5 hours ago, Jarnin said:

I'm like 90% sure that the new robot companion, Model G, cannot interact with doors. I used it as a companion for about 45 levels, and its gotten lost, or stuck behind a closed door about 70% of the time I'm running through a POI. If I jump up a level it can't seem to follow. I don't think it can't jump at all, and has no boost mechanism since boost is tied to jumping. Also, its scavenging skill is broken; I've never received any junk items from it in the ~72 hours I've put into my bounty hunter. Not like I need the junk items, but when a thing comes with a feature, I expect it to have been tested and guaranteed to work 😐

 

I did finally figure out how to get Model G on my ship; dismiss as a companion and then swap your home ship to a different ship and back. The thing is, MG can't open doors or climb ladders, so if you have a multiple level ship with lots of habs, you'll probably never see the little dude. He'll get stuck somewhere, and since there's really no purpose to having a big ship, there's really no reason to go running around looking for it. If you have a big crew I suppose one of them might open a door for it.

 

I really need to finish up these dumb tracker alliance quests and dive into Terran Armada content: The game is beginning to bore me again, probably because I'm working on some skills with challenges that are dumb as fuck: "Expend 100% of your O2 while encumbered 170 times"

 

So, they want me to load up on resources and jump into the air 170 times, but I have to wait for ~20 seconds between each jump so I can refill my O2. Just finished rank 2, and OMG this is fucking stupid. The amount of stupid baked into the skill challenges is just too damn high! I mean, piloting: "Kill a bunch of enemies to get better at flying your ship". What does combat have to do with flying a ship? Shouldn't the challenge be something like, "Land or dock your ship a bunch of times"? Combat is already required for offensive and defensive system skills, and rightfully so... why is combat the fall-back for all of the challenges? Either straight up "kill shit" or "take damage". I mean, I want to get Acrobatics next, and that's "take damage while encumbered", so back to jumping into the air while overloaded. IIRC, the second tier changes the challenge to killing enemies in zero-g, which is OK, I guess, but it still condenses into, "kill shit or take damage".

 

Bruce Nesmith devised the skill system in Starfield. It's functional, but it is not fun.

 

EDIT: I just watched Model G try to roll through a ladder for a solid minute.

mods man... use the mods... specifically RBT series on his perk overhaul...

[Jarnin]

Well, my Terran Armada experience began yesterday, and ended yesterday (until further notice). I ran into a game stopping bug after finishing the very first story mission in the expansion. I was told to fly to Anchorpoint and ask the Bartender for a specific drink. Problem: The bartender there has no dialog for buying a special drink, and the next mission will not start.

 

I've read that this bug can happen if you visit Anchorpoint before the main story quest kicks off. I went to that system for a radiant quest, but I never approached the station... I guess I'm going to be waiting another 2-4 weeks while Bethesda gets around to putting out the first bugfix patch.

 

 

[Djlegends]

12 hours ago, Jarnin said:

Well, my Terran Armada experience began yesterday, and ended yesterday (until further notice). I ran into a game stopping bug after finishing the very first story mission in the expansion. I was told to fly to Anchorpoint and ask the Bartender for a specific drink. Problem: The bartender there has no dialog for buying a special drink, and the next mission will not start.

 

I've read that this bug can happen if you visit Anchorpoint before the main story quest kicks off. I went to that system for a radiant quest, but I never approached the station... I guess I'm going to be waiting another 2-4 weeks while Bethesda gets around to putting out the first bugfix patch.

 

 

send it to arthmoor and he can find a fix for it

[DocClox]

On 4/23/2026 at 11:52 AM, Jarnin said:

The bartender there has no dialog for buying a special drink, and the next mission will not start.

 

It's under "I have a special request", rather than something on the menu. Just in case that helps.