No Man's Sky

I play exclusively on Nintendo Switch, if that matters, and upon picking back up after around three months of terrible work/life balance I find Switch players get nexus missions! Anyway, spent my quicksilver and just completed starbirth today and was wondering if there’s any good (and not an interminable YouTube video) advice on getting upgrades? I’ve got a bunch of living frigates and have been using them exclusively to pick up upgrades that way. I’ve also seen some 3 year old posts about just pulsing for random encounters that may drop upgrades but am only just now going to try that for a bit. Is that really the only two ways to get living ship upgrades? Sorry if this is a dull sort of question, I may have 250 hours in but I’m more of a wander around seeking novelty type player so a lot of obvious stuff escapes me unless it happens to be something I read a post about.