Material & Data Gathering
Materials and data are the fundamental building blocks for Engineering your ship's modules and for utilizing Synthesis, a system that allows you to craft temporary buffs or ammunition in the field. Materials are acquired through various means: they can be found on planetary surfaces when using your Surface Recon Vehicle (SRV), extracted from asteroid fragments after mining, or obtained as rewards from completing missions. Data, on the other hand, is primarily gathered through scanning activities. This includes scanning ships in supercruise or combat, performing wake scans to track ships' hyperspace jumps, and obtaining data from crashed ships or abandoned installations. Dedicating time to systematically gathering these resources is crucial, as they are often the bottleneck for unlocking powerful engineering upgrades. Understanding where to find specific materials, such as raw materials on rocky planets or manufactured materials at sal sources, is key to an efficient gathering process. The more materials and data you accumulate, the more effectively you can enhance your ship's performance and adapt to various challenges across the galaxy.