I'm playing RE1 and I don't know if that makes a difference but I have 4 marked at 40 to 60 LY from the starter area. I have 2 more further out, but I haven't seen anything in the territories. I guess my suggestion would be to hop more systems around the starting area, but not too close. Make sure you're looking for the bluish station icon.

You should be able to unlock them by finding the relevant schematic, although what you get when you decrypt a schematic is random. Once unlocked you can build them.

Thank you both for your replies! I will get back to starter system and search there. Aslo perhaps I should do the questchain to see if that unlocks the schematic.

Follow up question. As far as I understand (which again might be wrong) you need deuterium or something drilled from rich/dense ice asteroids to build the drill once you have the schematic, but you can buy the relevant drill from the merchant. Is this correct? Or have I missed something.

(i.e., you need the ice drill (which can be both bought and unlocked) to be able to craft the other drill which runs on deuterium fuel cells (which perhaps only can be unlocked via quests/schematic) is this correct?

Again, thank you very much!

Best regards,
Mr.B

Just to be clear I didn't find any scrapyards in the starter systems. They may occur there but not for me. But I did find them not that far out, the nearest I've found was only 41 LY from Alpha. So, not necessary to go great distances like Colonist space to find them. Can't help with the deuterium question.

Scrapyards is random. Look for blue coloured satelites icons on the system maps. Like the polaris trade station icon but blue.
You should be able to craft deuterium fuel cells. To get deuterium and coolant however, you will need to mine dense ice. For that you will need dense ice mining turret/laser. You can either buy them from Scrapyard or go to Eden exploration sites and do the puzzles. They often will have random schematics. You can also get the rich asteroid mining schematics from doing the polaris mission from the PDA. You will need to have 3million to unlock it at the end and money to buy it after. So it is pretty expensive.
Once you get going, you can mine dense ice with rich asteroid mining turret/laser/excavators too The difference being that the ice mining ones does not require ammo/fuel, where as rich asteroid ones requires deuterium fuel cells.

Schematics are also dropped in loot boxes in 'Abandoned' POIs (rares if I remember correctly). They may also be dropped in others but don't quote me on that.

Originally posted by nevryn:

Schematics are also dropped in loot boxes in 'Abandoned' POIs (rares if I remember correctly). They may also be dropped in others but don't quote me on that.

Yes they can. Very rare though. Much easier to get from exploration sites. A few hours doing those will pretty much nab you all the schematics and bunch of upgrade points etc. Well worth the effort.
Edit: this is for RE2 btw. Different for RE1

Millon thanks to the three of you! Small question, how do you make money fast? Got a scrapyard about 260 LY away. However I want that 3 m credits q. Got about 255 k credits atm. Got some ♥♥♥♥ to sell but from my perspective, most of the traders do not want to buy stuff. mostly generic stuff. Where are the traders that want to buy stuff that is actually worth something? (not optonic bridges etc. rather the more expenisive stuff) ? Any further assistance is much appreciated.

again, so far, THANK YOU! <3

Mine Asteroids for ore.. Neo and Sathium give the best returns when sold at a Polaris Refinary. Note do not refine the ore if you're going to sell it 4000 ore (an asteroid) will net about 500K.
The RE2 Plutus Refit is one way to do this.
The other way is via 'Undelivered Cargo' recovered from POIs (typically the Abandoned). Whilst not as lucrative directly it does have the added benefit of giving you 25 skill points and Rep with the faction the cargo belongs to. Useful beyond level 25. Then there are the UCH survey and research missions, which again whilst not as individually lucrative do yield other benefits.