I feel like I'm being punished for exploring.
As a note: haven't played since launch. Started a fresh save in Survival. Exploration is what I'm primarily interested in, but I don't want to play the easy "chill" mode.
Okay, so I feel like I'm being punished for exploring because every time I fly my ship to a new point of interest on a planet, 100% of my launch thruster fuel is consumed (200 plutonium). Trying to hop from place to place in my ship eats through an insane amount of fuel very quickly, which is very different from what I remember playing at launch. Am I doing something wrong? Should I be spending more time exploring on foot? Do I just need to manage my resources more efficiently? Being forced to collect at least 200 plutonium every time I land is not always feasible, and things can quickly spiral out of control when there are weather hazards (heat, cold, radiation, etc.) that eat through my shields, and simply running around on foot eats through my life support. Collecting Zinc for shields and Thamium for life support has worked fairly well, however, I cannot always find those resources and am sometimes forced to craft power cells with Carbon (which takes forever to mine) and plutonium (which I need for my ship). Crafting shielding shards for my constantly draining shields is just as much of an issue: Iron takes forever to mine and Platinum is not always available.
There are also tons of instances where I need a bunch of Carbon and Iron, so spending 15 minutes collecting those materials in weather hazards will eat through a lot of shielding (Zinc), and so then I have to go find more Zinc, which uses up more shields and life support power and thus more of my resources. Mining Iron in caves works pretty well until I run out of energy for my mining beam, and Carbon (fuel for mining beam) is not always available underground, so I have no choice but to return to the surface for more resources and all of the issues explained above repeat themselves. It feels like I'm climbing a crumbling mountain and I'm not gaining any ground.
How do I play this game more efficiently? Halp.