I am realising my errors, my mass is too heavy, I kept military hull which is 40 ton, as I didn't want to crash land, and some other things, I didn't really need
Well, you're smart to have made a short shakedown cruise where you know you'll come back and refit. The people who just head off for the core with no experience are the only ones making a mistake.
One tip I'll suggest is to get the heavy armor mod from Selene Jean. Apply it to a lightweight alloy hull. It doesn't add any weight! The blueprint says it does, but with lightweight alloys, it doesn't. All benefit. No downside.
Crashed into a star or two? You'll have to be more careful when you're exploring for real. You can't repair your hull.
the visual (and audio) clue to planet type is not clear to me.
Same here, at least for the audio. Supposedly there are chirping birds on earth-likes, but I can never hear them. Going by the visual though, I think I get most of the good ones.
Is it worth scanning moons, have to get real close to them.
Not for money, no. They're like 500 credits. If you're looking for a particular surface material, then maybe. Supposedly, alien surface bases will be detectable from orbit in a future patch, so that might change things as well.
I recommend that you give the 6B a try. It is significantly cheaper (if that's a concern for you), has higher integrity (one less thing to spend AFMU on), and in my experience, it's more than good enough. I always manage to full top off if the star is scoopable.
I also recommend downgrading to the 16 ton fuel tank on an Asp.
Here's my build - it looks like my range is quite short (four jumps) but I scoop so fast, it's never a problem. I don't even use the route filter (to plot a route using only scoopable stars). There's just (almost) always a scoopable star within four jumps.
Twice so far I've gotten low, so I just hopped on the galaxy map and selected a different star. No big deal. But my range is great so I really haul . 1000 light years is typically about 20 jumps.
That gives you more of a margin for error on high-G worlds. What I do is to just avoid those ers.
only 1 fuel tank (not sure if really need 2)
In my opinion, no.
2A beam laser, chaff, ... and point defence (why? Maybe aliens)
Okay whatever. Just dead weight in my opinion.
can heat sink ammo be replenished?
No, not yet anyway. That'd be a neat synthesis option, if fdev is listening. There is a lightweight mod for them though, if you have the engineer unlocked. I didn't.
It does state the gravity level in the HUD once you enter orbit, right underneath the coordinates.
Not sure if you're aware, but the number it shows when you first enter orbit is lower than the final value.
