Fueling

[Bismarck]

I want to start off by saying I love this game. Having said that, I am deeply frustrated with my fleets I am looking for assistance what I might be doing wrong. Note: all the game settings are default. So most everything, is automated

The frustration is in the time my fleets take to fuel and how often. It basically takes them about a months to fuel. I send them somewhere and then they need to fuel. Each fleet has 2 small tankers and compose, on average, of 11 ships. Should I have more tankers than combat ships? Should I build my own ships and have 3 times the number of fuel cells as default?

Another race has just declared war on me and all my fleets are fueling. They get to combat zone and engage in one battle then spend a year or so travelling to fuel and then fueling. Ok, i might be exaggerating on the year part.. but it sure feels like it as the other empire slowly takes my colonies.

Is there ways to build fuel stations with a lot of docking ports?

[starbuck310]

You have my experience to. Even with two tankers and the fleet sat doing nothing they refuse to fill the fleet unless I do it manually. Idle tankers set to automatic don’t refuel ships in need. It’s frustrating to have to micro manage something by becoming the petrol pump attendant 😆

[starbuck310]

One odd behaviour I have seen is that they can’t refuel they at one location they will move to the next gas location. Even if this means running out of fuel.

[Daju]

I'm trying to use a manual fleet to allow me to designate my attack targets. I have two refueling tankers in this fleet which I set to 'auto'. Everytime I move the fleet, or designate targets, it sets the tankers to manual mode which means they won't start refueling my ships after the battle. Plus, the tankers will charge into battle and get killed. manual fleet management turns into extreme micromanaging of tankers to remove them from fleet before battle, then regroup them after battle, and set them to auto. so frustrating and tedious.

[Bismarck]

Good. Its not just me.

I tried creating a fleet of just tankers. but.. I couldnt even get that fleet to move.

[Lysander]

Fuel tankers are mobile mining stations for Caslon, not for transferring fuel to your fleets on the fly. Take a look at what the auto tool creates with them, compare how many fuel cells you can put on them to your combat ships. They aren't giant fuel depots, they're mining ships. You find a caslon source, set them to mine it, and your military ships will refuel as the tanker mines up the caslon. With enough cargo storage they'll carry enough to refuel a few ships which is what they do on their own, but not a large fleet.

Edit:
Also consider your docking capabilities. Only so many ships can be docked to a space port or mining station at a time, based on your docking or construction module level. And it's not a lot, even at high techs. At the start, especially using the auto templates, it's literally just one or two. Trying to refuel a dozen ships is going to take a while, when you can only do two at a time.

Docking Modules and Construction modules go in purple slots, so you need to research better modules or higher tier stations to fit more of them. I believe tankers can only do one at a time, although maybe if you have more fuel transfer modules they will do more. Haven't actually tried that.

[Berethain]

I am wondering if you have energy collectors to offset some of the warp cost? Upgrading the efficiency of your warp generators will also improve that delay significantly.

[Endovior]

Originally posted by Lysander:

Fuel tankers are mobile mining stations for Caslon, not for transferring fuel to your fleets on the fly. Take a look at what the auto tool creates with them, compare how many fuel cells you can put on them to your combat ships. They aren't giant fuel depots, they're mining ships. You find a caslon source, set them to mine it, and your military ships will refuel as the tanker mines up the caslon. With enough cargo storage they'll carry enough to refuel a few ships which is what they do on their own, but not a large fleet.

Pretty sure that's just wrong. Whenever I look at my list of tankers (under Resources > Fuel Tankers), I find that none of them are mining Caslon; they're almost all carrying a big pile of Caslon, and have orders like "Transfer fuel to ship X" or "Load fuel at Spaceport Y". Also, none of the fuel tankers in my current game have the equipment (Mining Engines) required to mine Caslon.

[Lysander]

Originally posted by Endovior:

Pretty sure that's just wrong. Whenever I look at my list of tankers (under Resources > Fuel Tankers), I find that none of them are mining Caslon; they're almost all carrying a big pile of Caslon, and have orders like "Transfer fuel to ship X" or "Load fuel at Spaceport Y". Also, none of the fuel tankers in my current game have the equipment (Mining Engines) required to mine Caslon.

Go back and read the last line of my text block that you quoted. Fuel tankers on their own pickup your fuel and deliver it to ships that need it, that's their automated task. Fuel tankers in a fleet are meant to fuel your fleet up when you aren't in the middle of your territory with easy access to fuel, so they'll use what fuel they have to do that then they need to mine up the rest or fill back up. If all you want is the former function then don't put a fuel tanker in your fleet. Putting it in your fleet is going to override that behavior.

And if your fuel tankers don't have a mining engine it's either because you're too low level to be able to even fit one yet or you manually designed it to not have one.

[Endovior]

Originally posted by Lysander:

Originally posted by Endovior:

Pretty sure that's just wrong. Whenever I look at my list of tankers (under Resources > Fuel Tankers), I find that none of them are mining Caslon; they're almost all carrying a big pile of Caslon, and have orders like "Transfer fuel to ship X" or "Load fuel at Spaceport Y". Also, none of the fuel tankers in my current game have the equipment (Mining Engines) required to mine Caslon.

Go back and read the last line of my text block that you quoted. Fuel tankers on their own pickup your fuel and deliver it to ships that need it, that's their automated task. Fuel tankers in a fleet are meant to fuel your fleet up when you aren't in the middle of your territory with easy access to fuel, so they'll use what fuel they have to do that then they need to mine up the rest or fill back up. If all you want is the former function then don't put a fuel tanker in your fleet. Putting it in your fleet is going to override that behavior.

And if your fuel tankers don't have a mining engine it's either because you're too low level to be able to even fit one yet or you manually designed it to not have one.

I've got multiple upgrades on mining tech (and reactors, and crew spaces, and other ship-fitting tech), and have never touched the automation on the design of fuel tankers. I have not seen this behaviour you're describing; tankers just seem to be tankers, as opposed to also being miners.

Not sure if the automation takes this into account, but I'm pretty obsessive about setting up mining stations on every Caslon-bearing world I have access to. If I did for some reason have a bunch of tankers trying to mine Caslon, they wouldn't have much luck finding any.

[Bismarck]

Originally posted by Lysander:

Fuel tankers are mobile mining stations for Caslon, not for transferring fuel to your fleets on the fly. Take a look at what the auto tool creates with them, compare how many fuel cells you can put on them to your combat ships. They aren't giant fuel depots, they're mining ships. You find a caslon source, set them to mine it, and your military ships will refuel as the tanker mines up the caslon. With enough cargo storage they'll carry enough to refuel a few ships which is what they do on their own, but not a large fleet.

Edit:
Also consider your docking capabilities. Only so many ships can be docked to a space port or mining station at a time, based on your docking or construction module level. And it's not a lot, even at high techs. At the start, especially using the auto templates, it's literally just one or two. Trying to refuel a dozen ships is going to take a while, when you can only do two at a time.

Docking Modules and Construction modules go in purple slots, so you need to research better modules or higher tier stations to fit more of them. I believe tankers can only do one at a time, although maybe if you have more fuel transfer modules they will do more. Haven't actually tried that.

So.. I could create a tanker fleet with 10 tankers and send to a caslon source on the outskirts of my empire (where i have not mined yet). That would create a faster transfer to fuel ships as well creating a fuel depot?

[icedude94]

You can put remote fuel transfer components on stations too, not just tankers. This will allow a station to refuel more than one ship at a time when a fleet is ordered to refuel there and without any need to dock.

Those are internal white slot components so you can fit quite a lot on a large mining station hull.

You can also place a mining station with this setup without a caslon source. Just manually set the stockpile to max on caslon and private sector freighters will fill up your "fuel depot" station with caslon for you.

[Imperator]

Originally posted by Bismarck:

I want to start off by saying I love this game. Having said that, I am deeply frustrated with my fleets I am looking for assistance what I might be doing wrong. Note: all the game settings are default. So most everything, is automated

The frustration is in the time my fleets take to fuel and how often. It basically takes them about a months to fuel. I send them somewhere and then they need to fuel. Each fleet has 2 small tankers and compose, on average, of 11 ships. Should I have more tankers than combat ships? Should I build my own ships and have 3 times the number of fuel cells as default?

Another race has just declared war on me and all my fleets are fueling. They get to combat zone and engage in one battle then spend a year or so travelling to fuel and then fueling. Ok, i might be exaggerating on the year part.. but it sure feels like it as the other empire slowly takes my colonies.

Is there ways to build fuel stations with a lot of docking ports?

This is a simulation, therefore just as in real life, you can expect this problem in the game. You can see how slow it has taken Russia to progress into Ukraine, because they must solve logistical issues just like this. You must make sure your fleets are constantly fueled and ready to go if you have chosen to control this aspect manually. Keep them near a starbase when not in use and refuel them every few years. When they are in use, first ensure they are fueled up. Make sure your the starbase planet is getting sufficient quantities of Caslon from the private sector. Also, make sure you have enough starbases spread out in your empire so that you have a fleet ready to strike quickly if the need arises, and also to have "border guard" fleets to deter declarations of war from the enemy.

[Bismarck]

Originally posted by icedude94:

You can put remote fuel transfer components on stations too, not just tankers. This will allow a station to refuel more than one ship at a time when a fleet is ordered to refuel there and without any need to dock.

Those are internal white slot components so you can fit quite a lot on a large mining station hull.

You can also place a mining station with this setup without a caslon source. Just manually set the stockpile to max on caslon and private sector freighters will fill up your "fuel depot" station with caslon for you.

Brilliant. Thanks.

[Midas]

Originally posted by Berethain:

I am wondering if you have energy collectors to offset some of the warp cost? Upgrading the efficiency of your warp generators will also improve that delay significantly.

Only stationarys can use solar pannels

[el cid]

i ue this too whenever i got to war i setup a fuel depot or 2 at the frontline