Just like in the offline world, emergencies can happen in a game environment as well. The tools you have on hand and how you react can decide the outcome as rather mild to catastrophic. While we can handle some problems on our own, sometimes the situation is beyond our means and necessitates outside aid.
Smell a gas leak, call for help. Crash in the ditch, call for help. Get lost in the woods, call for help. The technicians, mechanics, and airmen of these individual professions and many more come together in an overarching sense where they're nice to have, but something you never want to need. Eyes & Ears is akin to these professions in Dual Universe. Nice to have, but not something you want to need.
Your safety and security start with you.
The following will outline some basic things which an individual can do to dramatically lessen the risk of being caught in an isolating situation.
For the most common and extreme situation, we will consider only one avatar using either an extra small or small core construct.
The techniques and methods used will make a best attempt to use the personal inventory space of a single avatar, no containers.
Since the first pre-alpha tests, players failed attempts at flyable constructs have been left behind, the broken elements a testament to their misfortune. Too heavy, lacking thrust, improperly placed adjusters, all this and more can lead to a player's pride and joy becoming a smoking wreck.
Sure, you can carry scrap with you, but using it properly matters even more.
Now, let's say we've crashed and broken our windshield and engines, we need to decide what element to fix. While it is nice to see where we're going, it's better to be going somewhere.
A broken element highlighted in red should be restored to a usable state before it will function. This initial process requires minimal scrap, so using a low tier scrap like carbon or iron is more economical than gold scrap. The reason for this is the multiplier effect associated with higher tier scrap where one unit of higher tier scrap can repair five times the hp compared to bottom tier scrap.
Smaller elements with fewer hp should be repaired with lower-tier scrap while the opposite would be true for larger elements with thousands of hp.
Flying too fast while in an atmosphere can cause damage to your ship's elements, this applies to both horizontal flight and atmospheric entry from outer space.
Preventing this from happening in the atmosphere requires knowing your ship's limits. How fast is too fast for your altitude or atmospheric density, what is my ship's cross-section, etc? Ships with a smaller cross-section can go faster at a given altitude.
Burning up on re-entry boils down to descending too fast. This problem can be managed through a combination of brakes and engines or by orientating your ship so it's greatest thrust vector is in opposition to your trajectory.
The best method to prevent burning up on re-entry or outright crashing into a celestial body is to brake early. Not aiming for the center of the planet also helps since it gives you more atmosphere to travel through. Finally, it doesn't hurt to aim for the outer rim of the planet and orbit around it. Not only does this provide more time to slow down, but it also can afford players picturesque moments.
Our fuel determines how much work we can get from our engines. That work determines where we can go, how far, and how fast. Having a lack of that work can easily spell trouble but is also just as easy to midigate.
Going beyond carrying more fuel, look at your construct and it's engine layout. Do you have more or bigger atmospheric engines than space engines, better carry more Nitron than Kergon. No rockets, then don't carry Xeron. Got vertical boosters but no space engines, those still need Kergon.
Unless fuel is being used by an engine, it's also storable in a regular storage container so feel free to ditch the extra tanks if you don't want to use them for storage.
Something fairly likely to happen to new people on their first few trips to space. Who doesn't want to spacewalk? Unfortunately EVA's during the coasting between planets can suddnely find players looking at their construct as it becomes ever smaller in the distance.