Step 1: Pledge to the power of your choice through the right hand panel.

Step 2: Find and complete the assignments either through the power menu or the transactions tab.

Step 3: You can now earn ranks and will progress as you collect merits - currently rare trading or collecting escape pods pays the best.

Step 4: Spread your power across the galaxy!

I suggest joining your Power discord to work with like minded CMDRs to greater effect.

Here I am, another day on the Thetis. 8 generations in and I bet they've all been the same. Nothing to do, but drifting along on this rust bucket hoping for a better life for our children's children.
Only distraction is that lout next door, always fiddling with his comm unit. He was bragging about finding something in the array from an uninhabited planet we passed years back, and was promising a listening party when he gets it decoded for everyone on deck C!

Jog on mate, nothing ever happens on the Thetis but I've still got better things to do than listen to that!

My first Thargoid experience was a terrifying encounter. 3 of us multicreed up, thinking we were invincible heading out to shoot some aliens.

We were dragged out of witchspace, lights flashing and strange sounds. Everything shut down - we were helpless! Finally the ship rebooted, there were these things flying around everywhere. The fighter barely scratched them, the turrets couldn't move fast enough.

Eject.... Eject... and we we were gone.

Time was against me. Visitors were arriving any minute as I plunged into the titan. With rusty skills I fired my pulse neutraliser..... And missed, getting launched back into space. With sinks running low I finally made it back through into the asteroid field, deploying missiles and damaging the core. 2M bounties collected, then the doorbell rang. Decal secured!

I'd be a power distributor, I love nudging effort towards where it would be most useful.

Salvaging can either be a focussed activity, where you go out and seek the exact materials you need to craft your perfectly engineered build, or something you do whilst playing the game.

That's my preference, and you can do this through simple measures such as:

1. Collect the dropped materials after destroying enemy ships

2. Choosing the material reward from missions (Hexagon with a hole in it!)

3. Target ships on your way in and out of stations, the minor data rewards build up. You can fit a wake scanner and grab some of those as well.

4. Fill your pockets doing odyssey missions - don't get caught but if it's not nailed down it can go in your backpack. Check the data ports scattered around as well. EDOMH is great for telling you what is irrelevant.

The day I learnt how an Auto Field Maintenance Unit works.

I was returning from my first deep space exploration trip in Elite - nothing special, but a few nice first discoveries and Systems ready for me to put my name on. Heading back to the bubble with the Carto data unsold, I saw a tourist beacon on a nearby planet and decided to stop off for a quick look.

Being new, I stuffed up the entry and failed to enter a glide. Rather than going back to supercruise to try again, I headed down on thrusters, expecting to take a couple of minutes. To pass the time, I decided to repair all my modules to make sure I had no problems for the journey home.

As I repaired my shields and thrusters, I discovered that the AFMU tuns off the module in order to repair it. I fell to the planet somewhat faster than planned, and even survived the first bounce off the surface before exploding with all of my discoveries!