Vermillion Online vs No Man's Sky

We get asked this because of Corvettes. Since the Voyagers update in August 2025, No Man's Sky lets you put a large ship together from modular parts, and a lot of players discovered they love designing ships. So it's fair to ask what a game built entirely around that feels like. The short version is that the building is a different kind of building, and the world around it is a very different world.

Scale: a universe vs one zone

No Man's Sky's universe is effectively endless. You can fly to a planet, land, walk it, build a base, and leave for the next star. The Cosmos update in September 2026 reworked space itself, adding more to do between planets.

Vermillion is deliberately small. One zone, 19 hex sectors over about 200 km, six stations, asteroid fields and pirate sites. The planets in our sky are backdrop, and you can't land on them. We made it small so that players run into each other, because in Vermillion the other players are the content: they mine, set prices, haul cargo and hunt.

Building ships: parts vs blocks

Corvettes in No Man's Sky snap together from modules: hulls, wings, engines, weapons, reactors and rooms. It's quick, it looks great, and you can furnish the inside and fly it with friends aboard.

Vermillion's designer works at a lower level. You place 1 m blocks: 68 armour shapes in Steel, Aluminium, Titanium, Iridium composite or Glass, plus about 140 functional parts. The big systems are assemblies you build up from pieces:

• A thruster is a nozzle plus amplifiers plus coolers. Where you put it decides which way the ship pushes.
• A cannon is a firing piece plus barrels, clips, autoloaders, gauge increasers and recoil absorbers, from 12 mm to 300 mm.
• Radar is a core plus emitters plus a dish. Mining lasers are a head plus focusing lenses.

More parts give more performance and add mass and heat. Flight is Newtonian on six axes, so a lopsided ship flies lopsided, and there's no speed cap: typical ships reach 150 to 300 m/s. You can test-fly any design from the designer for free, then fabricate it at a station from materials you mined and refined.

Multiplayer: sessions vs one shared server

No Man's Sky multiplayer is mostly co-op. You join friends or random travellers, visit each other's bases, run missions together, and meet up in the Space Anomaly. It works across platforms. PvP exists, but it's a setting, and most of the community plays peacefully.

Vermillion is one persistent world on one EU server. There are no sessions or instances to pick. Who can shoot whom depends on where you are:

• Secure: no damage at all.
• High security: attacks land, the attacker turns Criminal, and police destroy them after 20 seconds.
• Low security: no police. Station guns shoot criminals.
• Lawless: no rules, and the only place Iridium ore exists.

Our playtests so far have had a handful of players at a time. It's built as an MMO, and right now it's quiet. If you want to meet thousands of travellers, No Man's Sky is where they are.

What happens when you die

This is where the two games feel least alike. In No Man's Sky, death on normal settings is a short trip back to your grave marker to pick up what you dropped.

In Vermillion, losing a ship hurts. Half its cargo is destroyed and the rest spills into the wreck, where anyone can take it. Other players can salvage the hulk. Everyone aboard dies with the ship, and each character drops a body bag with what they carried, half of it gone. There's always a free Rookie Ship to start over in.

That's the deal: a design you're proud of can be taken apart block by block by someone else's guns. It's why the market works. Ships and cargo get destroyed, so someone always has to mine and build more.

Information and stealth

Vermillion only shows you what your sensors detect. Ships give off a signature from thrust, heat, guns and radar, and asteroids hide you. Pinging pulse radar finds hidden ore fields and pirate sites, and every pilot in range hears your ping as a bearing. Scanning is a choice with a cost.

Where No Man's Sky is better

• Planets. Landing, walking, base building, creatures, weather. We have none of it.
• Platforms. PC, Mac, PlayStation, Xbox and Switch, with cross-play. Vermillion is Mac and Windows only.
• Ten years of free updates. Far more content than any new game can offer.
• Relaxed co-op. Play with friends without anyone losing anything.
• Polish. It's a finished game. Ours is a playtest with rough edges.

Who should play which

If you want to wander, build bases and explore with friends, No Man's Sky is the better game, and nobody will take your Corvette. If building your Corvette was the best part and you want the next step, a ship where every block matters and losing it means something, try the Vermillion playtest.

Questions people ask

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