What's with the Colbalt shortage in the starter system? There is no more Cobalt to be had than what I already found since I mined out the two small deposits, and there are no meteors that bring new Cobalt. Without more Cobalt, I will not be able to leave the starter system because you can't build a CS with only 40 Cobalt ore. Zascosium and Erestrum are not available at all. If I start a new game, I'll be in the same situation. So what's the point?
The answer is salvage. Salvage everything you find. Those crashed CVs? Salvage them. The Titan sections? Salvage them. A lot of the salvaged loot will be steel plates, yes, but you will find cobalt as well if you salvage the thrusters. Usually as Cobalt Alloy in my experience. The other option is to check every Polaris POI and see if any of them sell Cobalt Ingots. They probably don't, but personally I would check them just in case. The last answer is to scout around for Cobalt Bearings but good luck finding those, as I think they are rather rare. But I'd try salvage before anything else, personally.
The only salvagable ship was the derelict one in space. It yielded some thrusters but they're M and don't seem to contain Cobalt. What are Titan sections? There seems to be a crashed CV on Aby territory, and trying to salvage it would make them unfriendly. There's also no telling if I'd yet again get the message that I need to replace the CPU, so I'd turn them unfriedly for nothing. Polaris has a single trader at their science station, and it doesn't sell Cobalt. I already checked. Cobalt bearings are very rare, and one bearing yields only 1 Cobalt ore. I need at least 400. So that's not an option.
Same idea as the crashed CVs, but broken into three sections. Front, Mid, and Rear should all exist on the same planet. If you find one, the others will be somewhere nearby(ish). If I recall correctly, should be a lot of stuff in them to salvage. What is Aby territory? I thought you only got Talon, Polaris, Zirax, and maybe Pirates on start planets? Maybe they changed that and I didn't notice.
So far, I've only found one crashed Titan which sent me to the Zirax base I can't get into the core room of. There wasn't anything to salvage from the Titan fragments, and IIRC they all have admin cores. According to the story, there can't be more than one Titan in the galaxy, and the one that crashed was never supposed to be there. Aby is the abbreviation for a "House of Abyssal" which seems to be somehow involved with the Zirax Empire. They are being friendly.
Yes, they sell a little bit of Neodymium and it helps. Erestrum and Zir... something, they don't sell.
