Data copyright © Andrew Reinhard unless otherwise stated
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Andrew
Reinhard
No Man's Sky Archaeology
The single thing that makes Mother Base in the Legacy Hub stand out is the fact that it is completely ordinary in every way. It is the first such Legacy Base (22/30) that did not float, was not buried, did not glitch, did not exist in two places at once, was not half-deconstructed, and remained in its original Pathfinder-era location. There is absolutely nothing "wrong" with this base, which of therefore makes it an anomaly in No Man's Sky post-v1.3 update. There is nothing odd about the base except the fact that its normal behavior is odd. The base could be treated as a control to the other bases that contain unusual phenomena. Despite its ordinary nature, Mother Base's homeworld did suffer a change from the Atlas Rises cataclsym, changing from a lush planet to a barren moon literally overnight.
Although no images survive of Mother Base in its original landscape, a post to the Galactic Hub subreddit on 26 May 2017 by player ykssnamo indicated that they had stopped for a visit during their search for the Hub capital of Lennon. Mother Base's creator, Solid_Luigi, replied the same day to say that he "had not been there in a while" and to "mow the grass." Ykssnamo's message stated that they had found rigogen on Mother Base's planet, which was called Shadow Moses at the time. This clue reveals not only that the planet's name had changed (and it had become a moon), but that it was grassy and had water. Rigogen is an underwater plant.
Mother Base was the 22nd site surveyed by Andrew Reinhard for the No Man's Sky Archaeological Project.