What's the secret to finding the Farmer in No Man's Sky NEXT?

Question

I've reached the point in the "Agricultural Research" base mission where I'm supposed to hire a farmer. I found the system in my Galaxy Map, warped to it, and got a waypoint on a planet:

So I took off, but before my craft even exited the tunnel, the waypoint moved back behind me! I boosted a bit to try to get an idea of what was going on, and I found the waypoint was back on the station:

So, I went back to the station and found the waypoint was, once again, back on the planet:

Initially I thought this was a glitch. So I teleported back to my home base and talked to my Overseer, but it's not saying anything new. Teleporting back to the station, reloading an autosave, manual save, and quitting to main menu and re-logging doesn't change anything.

I get that this is a puzzle, but I'm very confused at how to solve it. I tried going to my freighter, warping away and back, then the same with my starship, but that didn't get me any closer.

I admit I probably didn't pay close enough attention to what my Overseer was saying about working with another Gek—there was probably a clue there. I can't get a good enough picture even with my analyzer's zoom of where on the planet the waypoint is—should I try to fly down there and use my signal scanner or beacon? I don't think that's it, because as I've tried to work this out, the mission reminder periodically pops up telling me that staff to hire can be "found on stations". That hint is a little too subtle for me.

I've wasted a few hours on this puzzle and I've Googled around, but since I guess this is a new thing in Next (I never played the game before Next), I haven't found the puzzle even mentioned. I give up—I'd just like the solution. It's not a very interesting puzzle to me (and is probably something stupid I just hadn't thought of) and I'd like to just get on with the game. Thanks!

Update: it occurs to me that what could make sense from a storyline view is that this Farmer has had a run-in with my Overseer before and doesn't want anything to do with it, so the Farmer's evading me using the station's teleporter; when I dock, it teleports down to the planet, and then when I head for the planet, it teleports back to the station. So I suppose I should try to disable the station teleport somehow? But I can't figure out a way to do that—none of my equipment works inside the station.

Answer 1

Answering my own question here, it turns out to have been, if not a glitch, at least a bad interaction due to a corner case.

What happened was that, after I had placed the Agricultural Station in my base, I was editing my base structure from outside. I briefly misplaced a structure so that it overwrote the Agricultural Station, but since I was outside, I didn't notice.

Apparently the result of this—since I'd already activated the Farmer part of the mission and it had told me to go find it—was that the Farmer showed up in the system, but jumped away from the place—station or planet—I was on so I couldn't reach it.

Once I went back inside my base (having given up, for now, on the Farmer), I noticed the Agricultural Station was missing.¹ I reconstructed it, went back to the station, and:

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¹ This may be useful for some: if your inventory is filled in the process of deleting an element (because you have space in your inventory for the main item, but not subitems like glass for windows or you fill a stack when there's no slot in your exosuit to start another), you can build the Base Salvage Capsule, which is a large machine like a Large Refiner. It will contain any such items. (It can hold a huge amount, but allows only a one-way transfer to your exosuit.)

Answer 2

The mission is supposed to be quite easy. You are supposed to warp to the nearest Gek station, talk to the Gek there and find your Farmer.

There is no elaborate twist to the mission.

That being said, you seem to b experiencing a bug. Best bet would be to try to talk to every Gek on the station and to find out whether they can become your farmer or not. if that doesn't help, try another Gek station.