Supplies are sold at just about any trade dock. Make some money! Some options include:
- Find a bounty and shoot some ships. There are generic bounties, and special villain bounties.
- Do a trade mission. Sometimes trade missions can be found in bars, but they'll show up on the map as well.
- Look for battles. Any time two factions shoot at each other, they litter space with precious salvage and derelict ships. Join the battles if you like, that's a good way to make friends.
- Salvage, salvage, salvage. Keep spamming that salvage button and don't stop until you squeeze the wreckage dry. Most things can take 2-3 salvage attempts, but very rich spots might be worth 4 or more.
- Join the Hegemony. They'll pay you some money each month to help stay afloat.
The tutorial reward gives a very nice monthly paycheck to keep your fleet going. Check your finances tab, you should see +15k/month if the tutorial is complete.
There are some options to save money as well:
- Mothball ships. They will no longer consume supplies nor require crew. The cost is you automatically lose all current combat rating%. (some fleet abilities will also be disabled)
- Disable ship repairs. It is cheaper to maintain a damaged ship, than it is to fix it up and run out of supplies. The penalty for no supplies is pretty heavy.
- Sell ships. Strip off their guns first. It's not a great idea, the market pays scrapyard prices even if the ship is brand new.
- Scrap ships. Another awful option, you get pennies on the dollar in terms of scrap.
- Use your ships. Hey, you won't feel bad if they blow up, right? May as well use them up.
- Don't fly into the sun. Any time you see the "corona" effect on your fleet, your supplies are melting away faster than dropping ice into the sun.
- Do not go over your cargo/crew limits. Your fleet will essentially open its airlock doors and supplies will fly out. Reject excess fuel and metal, and sell your inventory to keep spare cargo room handy.
Just be rich bro!
Uh. That's not helpful at all. The way to riches is paved with high gains and low losses. Good first steps include learning how to make money, and how to avoid bleeding money. The death system is pretty generous so if you lose everything, you'll still respawn with some starter ships.
Increased maintenance
The "increased maintenance" mod is very scary at first glance, but monthly costs are one of the softer expenses in the game. The biggest cost of all is ship deployments. It can easily cost 50 supplies for an early game deployment, that's over $5k just to fight! D-mods make deployment costs cheaper, so you can get into more battles for cheap.