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Maybe it's just me, but tankers have been fairly decent if placed in fleet.
There seems to be 4 different AI logic 'suites' for fuel tankers -
1- Out of fleet, automated - these can and will go basically anywhere navigation data exists. So yup, if their pea brain decides good idea to go retrieve fuel or resupply another ship half galaxy away, off it goes like a moron.
2- Out of fleet, manual - perhaps by design, but tankers are only ship that when placed on manual are not really full manual. They will still go prospect using mining engine, buy/retrieve fuel from sources (your colony, mining stations, non-hostile fuel sources like independents, etc. Perhaps just my experience only, but out of fleet manual tankers don't seem to go skip across galaxy for mining or resupply. Only to refuel your own ships, which seem good thing?
e.g. I've had out of fleet tankers, on auto or manual, decide on their own to come refuel one of my attack fleets half way across galaxy. So yes, they'll go really far on their own, but so far seems like only do that when resupply my own forces, which isn't all bad.
3- In fleet, auto - this seems the best setting, even if your fleet is set to manual. Perhaps by design or beneficial bug, but you can set Fleet to manual for 100% player control other than ship logic like engage in same system, nearby, etc so that manual fleets will still defend themselves.
Anyway, in fleet, auto fuel tankers for my game plays have so far not gone off to do their own thing if not related to the fleet. e.g. my fleet tankers don't go refuel some non-fleet ship, they only go off on their own to retrofit, refuel themselves (which seems stupid b/c you'd think they would auto refuel each other, but seems they dont), or resupply (go mine or buy more fuel from independent colony, or fetch from non-hostile mining station). They will also obviously go off on their own to refuel my fleet ships.
In general, my exp has been in fleet auto tankers will basically follow fleett around, but at a delay, because they may be off doing one of the above fleet related logic (refuel themselves, resupply their fuel cargo, or mine for more fuel). They will obey fleet orders but only secondarily, it seems their auto logic is hard coded and that priority comes first. E.g. you tell fleet to retrofit, but if tanker is off on refuel mission, it will still do that first, then obey the fleet command. Same for move fleet to X, the tankers will obey that at a delay once whatever their own independent job is done.
4- In fleet, manual tankers are as noted above, not really manual. They will still go decide to do basically everything themselves, but seems at less frequency than in fleet auto tankers.
These tankers set to manual, but assigned to a fleet, will still go resupply themselves, refuel, mine for more fuel if caslon nearby and cargo hold nearly empty, but as they are attached to fleet, I've never seen one go extremely far away. Just usually within the confines of my own empire space or nearby stations outside border.
I can't say have done extensive testing, but the handful of times I've experimented between in fleet auto vs in fleet manual tankers, seems the in fleet auto do noticeably better job at being a tanker.
My preference is basically to have half my tanker fleet in some assigned fleet, with fleet set to manual, but tankers set to auto. Then produce that same number as solo tankers set to auto.
e.g. 40 tankers in empire, 20 assigned to fleets, 20 left as solo. In this scenario, happily for me, many times those solo tankers will assign themselves the job of refueling one of my manually controlled attack fleets.
As my attack fleet flies off to attack some colony, if I'm half or below fuel by time I get there, I will notice quite a few of my solo tankers assign themselves the job of refueling ships of my attack fleet. Which is great, because by time they get there, I've done my attack, used my own attached fleet tankers (the usually less than half or so that was free to follow me) to partially refuel, and now my solo tankers come to finish the job, or lets me extend the attack even deeper into enemy territory while my fleet tankers go off to refuel.
TLDR - their logic isn't great, could be better, and wish it were so. But for my play exp, they aren't that bad, fairly useful, and my main bone of contention is now fixed with current public beta (e.g. the insanely stupid scenario where a fleet commander can't order their own fleet tankers to refuel the fleet, and have to manually do it per tanker, per ship.
For everything else fleet overrides ship setting (provided the fleet has active orders). Are you saying that tankers are different, for some reason? Besides, manual tankers doing their own thing, while auto tankers staying with the fleet defies all logic.
If you're saying that they can behave - fine; I might even give them a try (even if I'm rather skeptical on the issue), but I since found that having two fuel tanks negates the need for fleet tankers almost entirely, and is not that hard to achieve.
Really? In my experience, all ships (and fleets), when put on manual, are not really manual: at best, they won't chase stuff out of the system. Usually, it simply means they will refrain from going out on automated missions.
1 - Try giving it a go now. Year ago vs now - the game is vastly improved, or seems so based on patch notes and player response.
2- Yes, tankers are different. I'm not talking about Fleet vs Ship template settings. If you set those, then it will use whichever you've given the override for (e.g. ignore ship created preference and use fleet template behavior).
What I'm referring to is for all ships but tankers, if you give the Fleet an order like --> Move here x,y,z --> all ships in the fleet, regardless where located in the galaxy will start to do that order.
--e.g. 20 ships in fleet, but 4 newly created because some died. Those 4 are many sectors away, but on Fleet move order, if on Auto, it will now set to Manual, and all ships will try to move. Or Attack XXX, same thing right?
--^^ same exact scenario but with tankers in fleet. Whether set to auto or manual per ship, if you give Fleet order to Move, Attack, whatever - unlike other ship types, the tankers are not bound to immediately obey that fleet order. You can verify this easily - give the fleet order, then click on some of the tankers. You'll see them continue to go supply some ship with fuel, head towards some fuel depot to resupply their cargo, etc. Eventually, the fleet order will register, but as I stated, it seems their personal logic comes first, then fleet command.
--another way you can easily check/verify tankers are just odd creatures and unique --> if fleet is set to Auto, what setting does those regular ships use? Auto right? e.g. if you have 10 destroyers and 10 frigates in fleet, set as Defend or Attack on auto with some fleet template parameter (33% fuel range, etc), every single ship will show the A for fully automated sign. As expected.
a) now give the fleet a manual order --> what happens? As expected, the fleet is changed from Auto to Manual right? And if you click on every frigate and destroyer in that fleet, you will also see each ship has been set to Manual.
^^ do exact same thing but with some tankers in fleet, set each tanker to auto - as in , click on the tanker, set it to Auto for that single ship at a time. Now toggle the Fleet setting from Auto to Manual, or back and forth, or give some fleet manual order like move, attack, etc. You will see those tankers in fleet still retain the separate Auto setting you put them on.
That's why I referred to it as 4 difference scenarios - 1) tanker set to auto in fleet, tanker set to manual in fleet, tanker set to auto as solo ship, tanker set to manual as solo ship. I've no special knowledge what the devs intended, so no idea if this is by design or bug. But tankers are the only ship that a) don't immediately obey a fleet order if part of that fleet, and b) can be set per ship to an Auto setting and still retain auto mode even if you toggle entire Fleet to manual.
3- I am not saying the tankers 'behave' or any sort of qualitative judgement. Only each player can make that assessment. What I am saying is they are predictable, in the sense their pea brain logic starts to make sense, and you can learn to herd them like cats. There's no way to know what specific self mission they will assign themselves, so not saying predictable as in 100%, but once you understand that fleet orders will be sort of queued in their to-do list, and that if you have reasonable numbers, it becomes fairly easy to expect and predict when they will resupply you.
^^ again, for example as briefly noted before -- if you have about half the tankers solo, not assigned to any fleet at all, is is fairly easy to predict/expect that some will come to refuel an attack fleet that is flying off and getting low on fuel. The only reason they may not immediately, is if you have too few tankers for overall empire size and ship numbers. But even then, you can verify this expected behavior.
While only one tanker may be fairly useless, if all you have in entire empire is that one solo tanker, just click on it and watch what it does. You'll see that if it's cargo hold is fairly full (so no self assigned resupply to go get more caslon), and it's personal fuel is decent (not below half for personal fuel), it will very predictably assign itself the task of refueling one of your fleet ships that is flying off to attack a distant location and fleet is ~half full on gas.
In the end, there are probably all sorts of factors that can affect how 'good' someone thinks tankers work (or not). Empire wide caslon resupply vs demand for example. If really low, then no matter how smart or dumb the tankers are, they won't do their job. Low supply of caslon would be the culprit, not the tanker's lack of trying. Or far too many attack fleets vs # of tankers ratio.
I've played some games with zero tankers, or parts of games since I restart a lot while trying out new races, but point is you can easily play without them. So am not making some false statement like 'must use tankers' etc. Just that the cat analogy might be best. All other ships are well trained dogs and will immediately do what you tell them to do. Fuel tankers are cats, and will eventually do what you learn to expect them to do.
Personally, that they don't refuel during battle is somewhat a deal breaker. They still get use for missions with a long path, but they're not really useful in general situations.
I generally don't even make a fuel tanker design anymore, and while the empire would be more fluid with them, I don't think it worth the cost. Fuel is really easy to handle now without them. Like Mozzy suggested: easy supply, low demand, not much work for the fuel tanker.
They're critical if something were to happen to those mining bases. Like the Shakturi. Except you need them before that happens... not when. It'll be too late~
We will need to test it, of course, but good news is the new refuel fleet from tankers command implies ^^ desire is possible.
Waiting for public beta branch to go live before testing, but seems like if you a) attach tankers to fleet, then b) periodically issue the refuel fleet from tankers command --> all those tankers ought to obediently follow along and always stay with fleet.
*unless their pea brain logic over-rides even that refuel from fleet tankers command, but if so, then the entire new feature would be useless - so here's hoping it is actually a top priority fleet command.
This would mean some micro-management, probably not what some players want with a sort of 'always stay with fleet' command. But if we had that, then we'd have another micro-management task, which is to order the tankers to go resupply (which at moment they do themselves).