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[_DivideByZero_]

Look at the sky to see if we can recognize any constellations.

[Dustan Hache]

Look at the sky to see if we can recognize any constellations.

We are inside a ship you ditz, not a glass dome. we probably have a 90 degree cone of view from our cockpit window at best. at worst, it's all screen based and we have zero visibility whatsoever. I would bet on the latter, otherwise sensors would be downright useless.

[Chiefwaffles]

I'm going to try to refrain from hints in the future, but I really thought these were apparent. I guess I was assuming people would go to a certain track of thinking?
1.) Your thrusters still work.
2.) There's some kind of space debris/station that could help.
3.) Maybe there's something on the planet.
4.) I'm not going to tell you exactly how to do anything that you ask about - maybe there is a way of restoring power using materials and/or tools acquired from your ship.
5.) See 4, but for everything. Asking about something is just going to present what the character knows - it's up to you, the players, to come up with new ideas.
6.) Remember: If you do want to jury-rig something, it's less "jury-rig a new power source" and more "See if there's something powering the interface, and if so, try overclocking it and diverting any possible power to life support" (Do not try this exact action please.)

Really the summary of above list is "I'm not telling you everything; it's up to you to come up with ideas"

Okay, there is something that's my fault. You can still maneuver in orbits and know how to get to things within the system assuming you can use your thrusters. It's only stellar navigation - where you are in the galaxy - that's broken. I really should have made this more obvious.

You look through the ship's canopy to see if you can recognize any constellations.
There's...
There's something that you think you recognize. The... The Hero... of ...something?
You really don't know much about constellations. Pilots are more trained for "shooty shooty" and less "explore explore".

You sigh and look back at your navigation system. You sigh and switch it back to local navigation. At least the air conditioning is working as part of life support.

[Dustan Hache]

See if there's something powering the interface, and if so, try overclocking it and diverting any possible power to life support Attempt to angle the ship to face the derelict station and fire the engines for roughly 15% of our battery to try and move there. Be ready to brake and/or find some sort of life-support suit.

[Maegil]

Attempt to angle the ship to face the derelict station and fire the engines for roughly 15% of our battery to try and move there. Be ready to brake and/or find some sort of life-support suit.

Is the debris locked in a planet's orbit or expanding freely in space?

Plot a coasting interception course to the closest edge of the debris field at the most cost-effective burn and counter-burn, according to the situation either inserting us into a high orbit or leaving enough momentum to scan for parts as we transverse the field.

While in transit, don a space suit, plug it to the ship for air and power, and disable the life support and internal lights. This would prevent wasting energy by thermal radiation from the hull, since we'll only keeping ourselves warm instead of the whole ship.

Check for acids, or even salt to make some brine, galvanized plates or screws and electric wire copper. If absolutely necessary we may be able to jury-rig zinc-copper batteries for some little extra power.

See if we have alternators or AC motors: we could jury-rig them with a fan and land on a planet with an atmosphere. Even if we can't breathe the air itself, we could recharge the capacitors with wind or hydro power.

[_DivideByZero_]

Look at the sky to see if we can recognize any constellations.

We are inside a ship you ditz, not a glass dome. we probably have a 90 degree cone of view from our cockpit window at best. at worst, it's all screen based and we have zero visibility whatsoever. I would bet on the latter, otherwise sensors would be downright useless.

...your point? Was it not worth a try?

[TheBiggerFish]

Ask the navigation computer to try and calculate stellar drift.

[Chiefwaffles]

I did some minor changes in some background stats, so the capacitor charge is a bit different. It's more or less the same as before effectively, just with slightly different numbers.You try to get the navigational system to calculate stellar drift, but it doesn't really lead anywhere. A feature or the theoretical ability to calculate stellar drift may be present on more advanced systems, but not this one. It's really just meant for simple orbital and hyperspace navigation. These ships tend to not get lost in space too often.

You task the navigation system with calculating an efficient intercept course with the debris. While it processes the burn, you start to check some other things. Sensors indicate that the debris is in a decaying planetary orbit. It'd probably enter the atmosphere in about a year if left untouched.

"Burn calculated. Burn time: 7 seconds. Estimated capacitor usage: 17.5%"
You press the buttons necessary to have the navigation system perform the rest and notify you once you've arrived.

You're actually already in a space suit. Your flight suit can survive a vacuum indefinitely and is able to last independently in space for about 30 minutes without an external source of life support and power. You double check your suit's connection to the life support port, and disable the cabin life support as well as lights.
That should save a bit of power.

You don't know of any alternators or AC motors in the ship. Alternators could maybe be found in a much older vehicle, but modern ships now use a much more advanced method of harnessing power from the various sources. There's a small chance of finding materials for makeshift batteries, but that would likely require something closer to light cannibalization of the ship. Something which you're fairly hesitant to do immediately. Though you know you have salt. Kind of. Some of the items in your rations definitely have salt on them.

Eventually, after 10 or so minutes, you arrive at your destination as the navigation system makes the small final burn to match orbits. You look outside the canopy at the space debris. It's...
Impressive.

Whatever it is, it looks like a really large ship. The design seems fairly human in nature, but definitely not similar to any Federation ships you know of. Near the center of one of the hull's sides, you can see a very large hole through the side and out the opposite end.
There also appear to a few other much more smaller intentional openings (You'd guess hangars, but they could be reactor exhaust ports for all you know.) below the actual hole, nearer to the front.
Surrounding the ship is a field of debris that seems to have come from the ship itself.

"Capacitor at: 39.1% of maximum capacity."

[Maegil]

Circle the hulk, collecting data from it while also checking if there's any recognizable parts that could be used. Examine the holes to confirm if they're really hangars, also check for docking ports and external airlocks. Save a 3D image with an overlay and a scale bar to your suit's memory for future reference. Verify the rotation rate of the hulk and add the data to your suit's inertial navigation system (INS), marking which way to the bow and top as reference points.

Look for a service dock with repair gear and spare parts warehouse. If the openings are hangars and there are any small ships in them, head for it. Board a small ship and look for a power source immediately usable.

If there are none, and since the hulk seems vaguely human, make a best guess to where the engineering section and bridge may be. While it's almost certain that he engineering will have large reactors and a stock of spare parts, the bridge is bound to have its own emergency backup systems. The latter should be both directly accessible to draw power from and better scaled to fit our ship.

Dock, land or anchor the ship to the hulk to or by the entry nearest to the probable bridge. Take a crowbar, a jack and and a cutter.
When going in, mark the entry point and subtract the measured rotation rate from the INS output. Set the INS to map your progress.

Make sure there's no pressure differential behind each door we go through - either use an airlock if the ship is pressurized, or only open the doors a bit and let them equalize if we move between pressurized and depressurized areas (closing nearby doors to speed up the process and protect as much of the hulk as possible).

We can search for logs once we're no longer in danger, but for now it's better to remain focused on survival.

[Chiefwaffles]

You try to conserve power by minimizing use of the thrusters, so you're forced to just spend more time examining the parts of the ship. The openings do look somewhat like hangars. Sensor scans on them reveal no signs of anything that could point to them not being hangars.
You would try to download some data onto your suit, but sadly that's not really what your suit does. Normally all that stuff is handled by the ship's systems. The suit is just meant for emergencies such as cabin depressurization.

Regardless, you mentally note some of the details about the ship and prepare to dock in one of the hangars. A quick burn starts you on your way as you look for any possible gear. You manage to find a jack and a crowbar stowed away with some emergency supplies, but no cutter. You clip both tools onto your suit and begin the burn to actually dock.
"Landing confirmed. Capacitor now at 28.3% charge."

You open the canopy after making sure your suit is ready and safe and shutting down the ship's systems, then slowly get out.
Or float out. You're briefly confused as you lose the sensation of gravity, but quickly realize that this ship has no gravity on it. Luckily there do seem to be plenty of structures located alongside the floors and walls that seem to be intended for use in low gravity.
"Suit Oxygen at 100%. Estimated time until depletion: 30 minutes."


Immediately you spot a relatively large ship docked in the hangar. It looks vaguely like a shuttle, but you're not too sure. You slowly make your way using the handles positioned on the floor towards the shuttle. You eventually approach the door. The control panel that seems intended to control the door seems to not be operational - almost definitely because of a depleted capacitor on the shuttle. After finding a hydraulics release latch hidden away, you're able to pry the door open.
"Suit Oxygen at 90%. Estimated time until depletion: 27 minutes."

You enter the shuttle. It looks like the door led to a cockpit. Two chairs with various seatbelts are placed in front of panels of instruments. Knowing that it would probably be useless with no power, you move onto the door dividing the cockpit and the rest of the craft. Luckily, it seems to be much easier to pry open then the last door.
"Suit Oxygen at 86.6%. Estimated time until depletion: 26 minutes."

Behidn the door lies the central portion of the craft - a large room with plenty of seating and what look like racks for storing cargo. You estimate it could probably comfortably hold 30 people. You scan the room for anything that could be the powersource. At the back of the room there's a giant door that appears to extend outwards as a ramp, but you know that there's space near the top back of the ship that's not covered by this room. It'd probably have the power in it.

You luck out and find a large maintenance panel covering a significant portion of the ceiling of the room. After about a minute, you manage to pry off the panel to see complex machinery behind it. You spend a bit trying to analyze it, and eventually think you have an idea of what it is.
It's the engine, but it's extremely different from the ones that you're used to. It looks like it's used to power chemical-based thrusters. Also appears to be the primary source of power for the craft, but that raises a question of a secondary power source. You also note that the apparent fuel tank appears to be full, as far as you can tell.

You quickly run back outside and look for signs of anything else that could be used to power the shuttle. Power from the engine is certainly a good number one source of power, but it means that the ship would run out of power eventually if it's not actively using its thrusters. After some scouring, you determine that the ship is using some kind of solar panels. They're pretty subtle and look almost built into the ship, but they're there.

What now?
"Suit Oxygen at 53.3%. Estimated time until depletion: 16 minutes."

[Dustan Hache]

Lets try and get the ship we just found moving again. It's chemically based with a solar array built in, right? see if we can jumpstart it with our own ship.

[Maegil]

While working, curse the suit for being so damnably nigh useless, and the quartermaster-general for issuing them, and your ship for being so basic and lacking even in basic tools, and the senate for being so cheap with the military budget, and all of them again for making you waste air cursing them.
Set the low oxygen warnings with a hefty safety margin, the first at ten minutes and the second at five.

See what tools are needed to remove the panels, and if the shuttle has them. If there are tools, start working; if not, go back to the ship and see if there's something we can use.

Only if there are no usable tools at all should we go off exploring, and our focus should be on repair bays, mechanics' benches and heavy-duty portable boxes

We can explore properly later, probably even find a perfectly usable portable generator. But, first of all, even if there's some potentially avoidable hard work ahead, we shouldn't just trust our luck - we need to focus in ensuring our survival by the guaranteed means in front of us.

Whenever the first alarm rings, lay down whatever it is that we're doing in a way that nothing will float off while we're away and return to our ship to recharge before the second alarm.

[_DivideByZero_]

If Dustin's plan fails, I vote for removing the solar panels instead so we can connect them to our own capacitor.

We probably don't have authentication to use the shuttle, anyway, if it does have an authentication system.

[Chiefwaffles]

You come up with a basic plan as you set oxygen level alarms for your suit. You'll try and see if you can get this ship's capacitor charged to the level of it starting up, and go from there. If that doesn't work, your plan B is to cannibalize the solar panels with tools if you can find them.

Much to your (relative) happiness, you seem to have parked your fighter close enough to the shuttle to be able to connect their batteries without moving something. You quickly rummage around in your ship for the cable and connect it to the capacitor's external port. Once this is done, you gently drag the other end of the rather bulky cable through the vacuum. You arrive again at the shuttle and start hoping that maybe, just maybe, there's a port for this type of connection.

There isn't. But there's something almost as good.  On the outside of the ship near the engine, you find a small hatch covering a port that seems to be designed to take in electricity. If you were to find a screwdriver, you could disconnect the port covering and jury-rig an exposed connection. Sure, it wouldn't be safe, but neither is exploring an unknown space hulk in an unknown area of space.
You remember that there may have been some kind of tools in the shuttle's main cabin. You gently crawl across the shuttle's hull, but right as you start entering through the open door, your first oxygen alarm sounds.
"WARNING: Suit Oxygen at 33.3%. Estimated time until depletion: 10 minutes."

You carefully throw yourself away from the shuttle towards your fighter. You hit the shuttle and grab on within a minute, and crawl into the cockpit. You turn the life support back on and connect your suit to the port.
As you wait the minute needed to refill your suit's oxygen, you watch the capacitor level steadily go down. Eventually your suit reaches maximum capacity again and you disconnect it.

"Capacitor at: 22.5% of maximum capacity."

You start again. You re-enter the shuttle and scour the main cabin for any signs of a screwdriver. Just as you're about to give up, you see another (more obvious, somehow) panel on the wall next to the engine panel. Labeled "EMERGENCY". You easily open it, as it's on a hinge, and find...
Not much. A screwdriver and a wrench are latched in place with plenty of empty spots for other tools also present. Still a great find, though. You grab both the screwdriver and the wrench and clip them onto your suit.
"Suit Oxygen at 83.3%. Estimated time until depletion: 25 minutes."

You head back up to the external port where you left the cable floating. You unscrew the port's covering and carefully pry it off. On the inside of the port, you very carefully attempt to bend the connectors into the right shape. After a couple of minutes, you think you've managed to get them in the right shape. You plug in the cable and brace yourself for an explosion.
"Suit Oxygen at 70%. Estimated time until depletion: 21 minutes."

The shuttle immediately starts lighting up. You wait about 10 seconds and release the cable to avoid completely draining your fighter's capacitor.

You swing around the hull and enter the cockpit. This time, plenty of screens (that you can luckily read) welcome you.

From what you can tell...
The Capacitor is at 50% maximum charge.
All systems are completely functional.
There appears to be a basic orbital navigation system.
The fuel tank is at 100% capacity.
Life Support is online.
Life Support is using up around 10% of the capacitor just to run though and would pretty quickly exhaust it. Doesn't look like there are any other notable draws on power, though.

What now?
"Suit Oxygen at 63.3%. Estimated time until depletion: 19 minutes."

[Maegil]

See if our suit can be connected to the shuttle, unlikely as that may be. Disable the shuttle's life support for now, we'll keep using the one in our ship. Look around the cockpit for the shuttle's manual. If there isn't one, turn the on-board computer on and see if the manual is in the system.

By whichever way, look for the engine start-up sequence so we can start producing some power. Use the correct procedure to start the engine lest we spike it.
Once the shuttle capacitor has started to recharge, reconnect the cable between the ships. While our own capacitor recharges fully, read up on how to power down the shuttle's engine. Power it down when we're done with it.

If this can't be done, go back to moving the panels to our ship.

Look for a map of the hulk in the shuttle's computer from which to learn the way to the bridge; turn everything off to save power.
Go back to our ship, get a marker pen or some insulating tape to make marks on the walls, refill the oxygen tank, and start exploring the hulk.

First priority: once inside the hulk, next to the airlock there should be a space suit locker. See if they have better suits than our own - one with propulsion, INS, HUD overlay computer, better autonomy, and gecko boots would be lovely... Take it back, check its condition as thoroughly as possible, don it and test it. Step into a vacuum and see if there are leaks.

If all is well, head for the bridge.