Help finding fuel

Hi all, loving the game but need a few tips on where to find fuel stars/planets?
Any help appreciated as I'm constantly dying in first few turns...

Eldrane wrote:Hi all, loving the game but need a few tips on where to find fuel stars/planets?
Any help appreciated as I'm constantly dying in first few turns...

Hi there!
In the beginning, your only source of fuel (other than random events) are gas giant planets. They are pretty common and can be recognized by parallel bands of different colors, similar to Jupiter in real life:



Once you get to the planet, you mine fuel using the 'Probe' option. Set your probe depth between 5-7km. Mining deeper greatly increases the risk of damaging your probe.

You can use both Hydrogen (H) and Helium (He) as fuel. Helium is more valuable since one unit yields four units of fuel, as opposed to two for Hydrogen.

Later in the game you will acquire the mysterious 'Omega' element. While it has many other uses, you CAN use it as an emergency source of fuel, oxygen, or even to repair your hull...

Make sure you have at least 50 hull points before going to a gas giant in the starter ship. Improved equipment and other vessels can lower damage a lot so also try to get install them.

If the yield of the first probe is low (>10) subsequent yields will be lower (half) so it might not be worth a second attempt. Generally a second probe is enough if the first return is high- particularly if helium is present.

However if you have lots if iron and some platinum you can dig at 10 km and hope not to destroy the drill/probe. You can luck out sometimes and get helium or other minerals not indicated by a scan

You can efficiently clean out a planet of its last helium/hydrogen with repeated 1km probes, though it gets pretty annoying. (i.e. one H per probe gives a net gain of 1 fuel)

At early stage, fuel can be found normally by sending probe to gas planets.
However at some point, it's much more difficult to be found and more fuel is needed since the star system will tend to spread further.

Many crafts dedicate survivability in different ways.
For instance :
Add-ons for space folder and interplanetary so they use much less. (And further warp of course)
Shield protect the ship from gas giants planet, so you would spend less fuel digging iron to fix the haul.
Ultraprobe make you obtain more fuel. Upgraded drill helps you find more iron/metals hence less fuel is spent on digging.

However I find myself run out of juice eventually though. My future strategy is I'll try to build shield with thermal upgrade and ultraprobe so I can gather fuel from stars, which is available in every systems.

I strongly suggest you mine the initial 2 yellow systems at 10km for both gas and rocky worlds. With a little luck you have a lot of helium and iron to give you wiggle room for exploration

I find the different strategies used by other cosmonauts interesting, My method of getting fuel goes like so: use up what ever fuel I have In storage to conserve space and send in a probe to 7km (rarely breaks when I do it) if the amount of fuel I get is over 20, then I'll mine it again for another seven km and usually it's worth it, if the planet or sun has "He" (helium) then be sure to mine a second time no matter how much you got because that stuff only needs 3 pts to give you a net profit for the cost of harvesting.

If you have a ego scanner, I like to scan it before and after harvesting for fuel to determine which fuel in my storage I should use up before sending a probe in and after it's useful to seeing if there is any more in there, usually I won't bother if scanner is saying "-" unless it's helium