I am up to 140 hours in The Last Caretaker.

It scratches an itch in a similar way to EVE. There are goals that the game feeds you, and you can also set your own – with plenty of different approaches you can take and mindless effort in between.

Let’s start with fuel.

This is my ship, docked at the only oil rig in the game. My ship is what I call neatly cluttered. I like being able to fit in as much storage and equipment as possible, so I can manufacture as much as I can on it.

The ship is propelled by two engines – one electric and one diesel. Both are fully upgraded, and I can run the Electric engine all day every day.

The ship comes with an internal 2,000 litre Diesel fuel tank. I have 14 more 2,000 litre tanks attached along the Starboard side of the hull, giving a usable 30,000 litres. That means I must dock on the port side.

I have two other 2,000 litre Diesel tanks which are not used in day-to-day travel. One is attached to a Distillation tower, and the other to a Fabricator.

With both engines running at around 90%, I average 45km/h, and my fuel burn is around 300lt/km, giving a range of 100km.

As mentioned, I also have a Distillation tower and 10 additional 2,000 litre oil tanks.

These are mostly mounted on the side of the Bridge and can be walked though / under without issue.

The Distillation Tower converts each 2,000 litres of oil into 3,600 litres of Diesel. So, I have the equivalent of 66,000 litres of diesel, giving a range of approximately 220km. For context, from one side of the known map to the other is around 20km.

Further I have a Diesel Refinery on the ship which converts organic material into Diesel, at 4L per unit. So, every 75 Units of organic material equates to about 1km of travel. Generally, I use it to get rid of excess material, but it is an emergency option if needed.

Despite carrying all this fuel, I still have plenty of room on deck to land and takeoff with the gyrocopter. It is the surprising level of flexibility in which you can set things up which makes the game enjoyable.

(I can arguably carry less fuel – but I am offloading it in various caches as I move around the map.)

The Distillation also creates petrol, which is used by generators, flame weapons and the gyrocopter, but I might talk about petrol another day.