Yeah, if you're completely out of fuel, you're boned, ON SP ONLY. Like Marv said, log in online and call for some one to come and trade you fuel. Heck, I carry a fuel converter, just because I can. I hate buying fuel, and hovering in the corona of a sun is great fun! If you can get to where the gravity reading says about 1100-1200, anything that comes to challenge you while you refuel, will fall into the sun! A deploy constructor can summon a fuel station, which is costly, but parking close to its center converts your weapon energy to fuel. It's slow, but you can speed it up by shifting power to weapons.
You sound like you got a handle on the game! Now you want to focus on having fun, since success is sooo easy!
Doing war missions in warzones will gain you levels to use better combat frames, and those are far superior to the civ frames for battle. And a cloaking generator is hard to come by, but very handy. You can loiter in a system for several minutes in safety. Don't forget, exchanging ships leads to no "depreciation" or resale-value costs. Swap ships as many times as you like! Forget not to re-adjust your frame's configurations to suit you, and if you haven't found out yet, the economy of the system determines which civilian frames are available, but the mil frames are effected only by rank.
If you have trouble with some missions, you can hire local civ ships, which will make the missions much easier. They stay with you until you leave the sector, can be given orders, and don't cost much in comparison to the amount you can make with their help. Become the highest mil rank, and order the navy about!
Build your own weapons, and you can get all the materials you need from mining metal, platinum, and hydrogen. IF you have a fuel converter, you can't mine hydrogen, because it converts it. Hydrogen is found in the space near stars or in a nebula. Custom cannons and lasers can reach much farther than stock units, and often deal more damage. Aside from a few specialties in the stock units, you can out-make anything you can find. It has yet to be proven, but much evidence supports that bigger engines give more weapon energy.
You'll notice the more successful you are, the higher commodities cost, like fuel and stations and licenses. The best way to make cash is trading, and its damn cheap!
But if pure amounts of money is your goal, there is only one place....
Pearl...
That's all you need to know.
And then there are lots of places to explore. There are no walls between systems, and if you have enough fuel and patience, you can simply travel from system to system with NO GATES. You'll find the co-ordinates for the systems on the quadrant map. Plus oodles of hidden systems and goodies to find. There is a black hole near Sapphire, with a wormhole at its core. Good luck finding it! It isn't hard tho.
That's all you need to know! Have fun and explore! There are no ultimate goals, bosses, win conditions, just play, fight, and have fun! You can roleplay, team up with friends, learn the art of combat (which I find intelligently satisfying, not trigger happy insanity), challenge other players, do what suits you! I played with Marvin and some guys to do some missions in Terrain walkers. Pretty fun, if not exactly practical.
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