Whats a good tip of refueling?

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: Wade1000

Can such ships be automated to go refill fuel and return to refuel the fleet?

Frankly, I don't know what it does on automation. I don't give my slaves much authority in my empire.

Test it?

I know it will sit in space and when I select the entire fleet I can right-click on the resupply ship and everyone goes and refuels there. The name of the ship pop's up along with the other options (at nearest refueling point, and at your nearest space port). When the ship runs close to empty on fuel in the CARGO, I tell it to go fill up at the nearest gas giant. When it's filled, I order it back to some safespot near the combat fleet.

If the AI is written using a goal driven agent behavior it should and queue/stack the actions.

A note on safety, based on my play the AI seems to concentrate on activities inside systems. Things you do in deep space go largely unnoticed. I have yet to have one my strike forces sitting just a few seconds outside a target system preemptively attacked. Same goes for my logistics slaves. [8D]

p.s. yes, I do add construction modules to my re-supply ships.

[HsojVvad]

I don't get it. Why would you put construction modules on re-supply ships?

[Malevolence]

Repair damaged ships far from home... and build deep-space monitoring stations, etc.

Think of them as tenders.

[Wade1000]

Yep, TENDERS! Huge resupply and repair ships. Cool, thanks.

[HsojVvad]

Thanks again Mlevolence. I never thought of that. I hope I remember to do this, when I start playing DW again. How would I order a ship to repair at the tender?

[Wade1000]

-Now if a new design was added called "tender" then maybe once automated it could leave to refill it's fuel tanks then return to the location of the wherever the fleet it was servicing was at or has moved onward to.
Or, can this be made to be done already with the resupply ship design?

[Malevolence]

I'm sure you realize that resupply ships are created at colonies. Until someone decides to nerf them, they are not constrained in size by your construction tech level. If you have the cash, they are the true death stars, motherships, supercarriers, dreadnaughts, whatever you want to call them.

[OrigamiZoo]

I guess I should have been more specific with my test results.
I could order my ship to mine, and it would... But it had no effect when my ship was given the refuel command.
I was using an explorer ship with 1 extractor and 1 cargo, otherwise default config.
I'll test what happens if I add a docking bay, since that might change how it acts.

[Malevolence]

ORIGINAL: OrigamiZoo

I guess I should have been more specific with my test results.
I could order my ship to mine, and it would... But it had no effect when my ship was given the refuel command.
I was using an explorer ship with 1 extractor and 1 cargo, otherwise default config.
I'll test what happens if I add a docking bay, since that might change how it acts.

I'm also note sure what part the "role" category plays on the command menu. I am, however, totally sure that ships and bases/ports cannot exchange things/repair other ships without docking bays. The docking bays determine how many ships your ship/base can support at a time. If you only have one docking bay on your resupply ship, each ship in the fleet will go one at a time.

On the "Edit Design" screen, look at the box in the middle right side titled "Industry". At the bottom of that list, "Docking Bays", tells you how many ships your design can service at a time.

--EDIT: Let me clarify about repairs: I'm not sure if the damaged ship uses the docking bay or the ship yard slot or both. All my ship yards have docking bays. Someone can test if they like.