Bases in No Man’s Sky provide a point for the player to return to via teleportation at almost any point, as well provide them with a variety of additional features and advantage. However, the most important change the selection of a home planet and construction of a base provides is a sense of constant scale and context- rather than galaxy of endless exploration, the player can instead think of planets and systems in the context of what direction and how far they are from their home planet. While the player can change the location of their base at any time by rebuilding it on a newly designated home planet, this makes the galaxy feel like a universe to be explored, with their home planet as the sanctuary to return to at the end of long treks of exploration.
