Why are my fleets always running out of fuel?

[badger_ken]

I'm pretty experienced at Space 4X games, and yet in this one (on 'Hard'), I find I'm constantly hamstrung by fleets unable to move because they're out of, or almost out of, Caslon. The other AI players seem to able to zip around much more frequently than I am, not having to take long 'pauses to refresh' all the time. I've tried 3 different races (Human, Teekan, Zenox) and yet it happens every time. I know this is hard to diagnose at a distance, but here's what I'm doing:

• mine Caslon whenever possible
  
• agree to trade agreements whenever I don't have to pay for them
  
• Either use AI auto-generated ship designs, or if I design my own, I start with the auto-generated ones and don't reduce the number of fuel cells.
  
• try to keep 'engine' and 'storage' and 'hyperdrive' technologies at the same tier as, or a tier ahead of, the 'norm' for my progress.
  
• steal 'compressed fuel storage' as soon as I see it'
  
• either have the AI move my fleets, or, if on manual, set 'automatically refuel manual {ships, fleets} to 'yes'
  
• try to keep 'ship and base maintenance' to 3/4 of colony tax or less. I always seem to have fewer ships than the other players.
  
• build a fuel tanker whenever the AI suggests. Let the AI run them
  
• Right now I have 31 escorts, 13 frigates, 10 destroyers, 3 cruisers - try to keep it a 'pyramid' with fewer numbers of bigger ships

and yet, as I said, seems like my fleets are always 'gasping for air' while enemy fleets zip to and fro. Any suggestions as to what I'm missing?

thanks!

[badger_ken]

oh, a few more details - mining Caslon in 13 places, "Resources" display shows it as "low" but not "critical". This in a fairly compact empire (I'm one of the smaller ones) with 12 colonies.

[OddQuasar]

your civilian fleet can also be quite thirsty in the mid-game. The only advice I can give is not to neglect the "Mining Rate" research branch. unless you have a ton of Caslon sources, it's very much required to keep up.

[badger_ken]

great tip, thanks. Is there any way to check how much caslon the civilian fleet is consuming?

[badger_ken]

PS just checked, I have 'fast mining', the one after that would be 7 years tor research :(

[Nightskies]

You probably have too many spaceports. Each colony keeps a target stock of caslon- but having a spaceport there multiplies that target stock- we're talking around 5* more. If you have lots of colonies and lots of spaceports, your fuel will be spread thin, making it difficult for your fleets to top up. Small colonies should ideally only have enough for a couple transports, not thousands.

To solve this, either take manual control of your stock targets (a dreadfully big task), or remove stations from where they're not needed. Any station can provide the happiness bonus from a medical and entertainment facility- a monitoring station, tourist base, or even a defense bastion- you don't need the research facility and construction yard(s) at every colony.

This is a primary cause of a player's caslon woes.

[badger_ken]

@nightskies thank you, I _bet_ that's it. I have been building spaceports at every colony, because of the defense, the repair capability, getting another research lab, etc.

[badger_ken]

BTW, does this caveat include captured pirate bases? Should I be blowing them up instead of capturing them?

[Nightskies]

Take them, for sure. You'll get tech for repairing them- though I often chose to scrap them. I'll usually set their stock target to 0 across the board, and if your empire needs any of the resources, a freighter will come take them from the station.

[TheMac]

Something changed in the second to the last beta, and I reported it. Prior to that on Very Hard difficulty I was absolutely swimming in Caslon. Now it's a bit harder to keep up, but there's a decent work around.

Bug report - told working as expected
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/discussions/3/3805028908499468919/

Work around is to add two small mining engines to all mining stations, so that there's:

1 x 100 size
2 x 50 size

That will double your mined Caslon early game and help prevent the shortages seen since the second to the last beta. Other suggestions from Nightskies and Oddquasar are also helpful. Also, be sure to upgrade your hyperdrives and reactors.

--A slow fleet is a poor fleet--

[Nitro]

My gripe with Caslon is the time it can take a large fleet to completely refuel. Seems we need a "Space Buckee's" module with hundreds of Caslon pumps. Also a fleet in friendly or allied orbit should never get low on fuel if it is available.

[russlog6]

I've had problems with caslon. What seems to work is a universal approach to research ie boost constructor size, boost freighter size, boost mining rate, boost cargo size, boost hyper jump technology, boost fuel capacity. Try to negotiate military refuelling with other factions, pirates.

[mtilsted]

Originally posted by Nitro:

My gripe with Caslon is the time it can take a large fleet to completely refuel. Seems we need a "Space Buckee's" module with hundreds of Caslon pumps. Also a fleet in friendly or allied orbit should never get low on fuel if it is available.

The secret to fast fueling a large fleet is to refuel on the planet, not on the attached space station

[jorgen_cab]

Originally posted by TheMac:

Something changed in the second to the last beta, and I reported it. Prior to that on Very Hard difficulty I was absolutely swimming in Caslon. Now it's a bit harder to keep up, but there's a decent work around.

Bug report - told working as expected
https://steamcommunity.com/app/1531540/discussions/3/3805028908499468919/

Work around is to add two small mining engines to all mining stations, so that there's:

1 x 100 size
2 x 50 size

That will double your mined Caslon early game and help prevent the shortages seen since the second to the last beta. Other suggestions from Nightskies and Oddquasar are also helpful. Also, be sure to upgrade your hyperdrives and reactors.

--A slow fleet is a poor fleet--

This is perfectly fine to do but is a serious game exploit that the AI can't do... in general I avoid exploiting these kind of things for better game balance. The same with say using colony ship to move large amouts of population to new colonies which breaks game balance quite significantly.

I actually modded the game so you can't even do this game exploit at all... so it is more fair against the what the AI is capable of. The game is easy enough as it is.

[badger_ken]

hi folks, OP here, just thought I'd report back. Things are now OK, but I found that no one technique sufficed. I am now doing ALL the following as recommended from earlier posts.
1. reduce the number of space ports.
2. build an extra small mining engine (or even 2) onto a large mining station (@jorgen I don't know why you'd consider this an exploit, designs routinely have multiple fuel cells, or reactors, or cargo bays, or whatever - why not mining engines?)
3. make sure that mining techs are high priority
4. make sure that "auto-refuel manual fleets" policy is on

PS agree with @Nitro it still seems to take way too long to refuel, oh well.

[Nightskies]

Mind you, if you build spaceports slowly, you should eventually be fine with having one on every colony.

#2 is something the AI cannot do, so it's kind of cheesy. Regardless, it is an intended feature, supposedly- it seems great attention to what stacks and what doesn't was made. The only exception I know of was how Military Academies could stack when a player could build multiple of them- an issue that was repeatedly hit but is now working as intended (does not stack and can't build multiple).