The free freighter will be available soon enough. It is a story mission that should pop when you warp (maybe more than once) and it will toss you into a firefight around a freighter. Glad you found that multi-tool. Remember in those hazardous planets there are some options available to extend your time roving around (not just suit upgrades to better deal with each type of storm/rads, etc). You can teleport your ship to you if it is far away by pressing up or down on the d-pad (forget which) and selecting the plane. Also with the terrain tool you can dig down and then sideways to get yourself out of a storm. I always keep a refiner on me in my inventory as it is a great place (underground) to wait out a storm and get some work done.

Back to looking for a base planet. Thought I had a winner but it was night and when day hit I saw that the whole planet was filled with tiny rocks on the ground everywhere and would be a pain to build in. Game has a weirdly small draw distance and it looks like if you travel just a bit there are no rocks but they slowly pop in.