I'm fairly far along in No Man's Sky. I've gone through a lot of the tutorials and I just got the emeril (aka green) warp drive working. I've got something in the neighborhood of 26 million units, and I've got a base set up on a planet with storm crystals, so I can snag a few million in about 15 minutes, depending on when a storm shows up.
Besides normal starships, the game also has freighters that you can get. A freighter is MUCH larger, never lands, and can hold about a dozen ships. You can build a base on a freighter, too. A low class, weak freighter costs a few million credits so I could probably buy one, but the game has a mechanic that allows you to get your first freighter for free. After you've been playing for a few hours and you make 5 jumps to different solar systems, your jump will land you smack dab in the middle of a space battle with pirates attacking a freighter. If you save the freighter (as opposed to simply flying away), the freighter captain will give you the freighter for free. If you decline, you'll get another opportunity later, until you agree to take one.
I haven't been doing a whole lot of jumping to new systems, or even old systems. I've mostly been staying in the first systems I've encountered, working on my base and the early quests. Thus, I haven't had many shots at free freighters. The first freighter I was offered was a really low-end, low-class freighter so I refused. Same thing with the second. I just got the third one, though, and it was the charm! An A-class ship that looks like a star destroyer!
So, the second crashed ship I find is an S-class, the third freighter I'm offered is an A-class capital ship. That's some serious luck! (Once I got the freighter, I saved the game about a dozen times.
)
They've changed how bases built on freighters work since I played. When I last saw them, you got a big floor (of junk?) that you cleared out and put proper rooms into to make your base. Now the base seems to be on the outside of the ship. There are some new rooms you can get, too, including a scanner room that lets you scan all the planets in a solar system, which beats the tar out of flying the ship out and doing a scan on each one individually.
I've seen people talking about pirate ships attacking freighters, too. I don't know a THING about how that works, but I think I better find out the easy way.