How does inter-fleet refuel work?

[RaptorSolutions]

Had a ship get stuck one jump off an inhabited system, so I flew back there thinking I'll get my other ships to refuel it. That did not happen so I had to fast forward while it's integrated ramscoop slowly refueled it.

I tried boarding it but that didn't work. I was under the impression they would dock with each other or something but that didn't work either.

Incidentally how does it work if they are both in other systems? Like say for reasons your flagship massively outpaces them and the laggards happen to both be in the same system and one of them has fuel and the other doesn't. Do they just automatically transfer?

Actually thinking about it, does shift-J forces refuel? Or do they just wait until it refuels?

[Timerlane]

AFAIK, if one of your ships has fuel, it will generally prefer to keep following you rather than helping. There are however, somewhat annoying situations were a mission-provided 'escort' will suddenly decide to render assistance to one of the NPC ships in the system, and won't leave until they do it.

You can always do the refuel yourself by targeting the ship and docking with it. One 'jump' worth of fuel will be given from your reserves to the target ship, if needed.

I know that least holding 'J' usually tells any out of fuel ships that they need to immediately find a way to solve their problem(usually either heading to the nearest star, or landing on an inhabited planet in the system).

I have to admit I don't really rely on NPC-ship 'charity' refuels very often, and load up all my 'serious' fleet ships with 800-900 fuel and ramscoop, but what I have seen of it doesn't seem terribly consistent/predictable.

[RaptorSolutions]

Originally posted by Timerlane:

You can always do the refuel yourself by targeting the ship and docking with it. One 'jump' worth of fuel will be given from your reserves to the target ship, if needed.

This, how do I do this? I probably pressed the wrong button or did the wrong thing.
Also do your ships not refuel each other? My situation was I have my core fleet basically bringing my captures elsewhere for outfitting and I guess long term storage. So my core fleet has all the goodies to travel far, the captures, not so much. So in that case one of my captured fleet was stuck behind, so I brought my fleet over expecting they'll just refuel it, but they didn't.

[Timerlane]

If one of your ships is out of fuel, target it and press 'B' to board it personally(just as if you were trying to capture it). If it is indeed at less than one jump-worth of fuel(depending on what type of drive is installed), it will come to a stop and let you do that. If it's not disabled or out of fuel, nothing will happen.

In-fleet seems inconsistent at best, and I just self-refuel any captured ship that needs it.

[RaptorSolutions]

Hmmm.... I swear I clicked that, but maybe I did it wrong. Thanks, I'll try again next time.

[callmetrivial]

Originally posted by RaptorSolutions:

Hmmm.... I swear I clicked that, but maybe I did it wrong. Thanks, I'll try again next time.

possible if you have a jump drive and were at >200 but <300 that you "did not have enough fuel to transfer"

[RaptorSolutions]

Originally posted by callmetrivial:

Originally posted by RaptorSolutions:

Hmmm.... I swear I clicked that, but maybe I did it wrong. Thanks, I'll try again next time.

possible if you have a jump drive and were at >200 but <300 that you "did not have enough fuel to transfer"

I see, though I definitely did not have that issue. I'll just chalk it up to user error.