Refueling Question

[Dereck]

I'm placing small patrol fleets in my mining systems. I do it by selecting the fleet from the fleet screen (the star on the left side menu) and then right-clicking on the system and selecting patrol and then system. They are manual - I've found if the fleets are on auto they will return to their home port instead of patrolling where I want them to stay.

My question is: how do i set it up where they refuel at the system? Every system so far has had more than one gas giant and there are gas mining stations there.

Thanks.

[Aeson]

There is no easy way to set where a fleet refuels. The only way to do it is to monitor the fleet and, when it gets low on fuel, manually issue a "refuel at ..." order, and even then it can be a bit of a pain to order the fleet to a specific station ('nearest' is normally good enough, if you have a station with enough available fuel locally), but then you have to reissue the patrol order if you want them to resume patrolling the system.

Instead of ordering fleets to patrol systems, I would suggest that you set the fleet's home base to a station in the system you want protected (there is a button on the fleet details panel in the lower left hand corner of the screen that allows you to set the home base to any colony or station belonging to your empire that you can click on in the main window; the button icon looks like a planet), set the fleet up for defensive posture with a system-wide area of operations, and automate it. You do need to worry a bit about the station being destroyed and the fleet losing its home base, but it's much less hassle than dealing with patrol orders and keeping an eye on the fuel situation.

[Dereck]

ORIGINAL: Aeson


Instead of ordering fleets to patrol systems, I would suggest that you set the fleet's home base to a station in the system you want protected (there is a button on the fleet details panel in the lower left hand corner of the screen that allows you to set the home base to any colony or station belonging to your empire that you can click on in the main window; the button icon looks like a planet), set the fleet up for defensive posture with a system-wide area of operations, and automate it. You do need to worry a bit about the station being destroyed and the fleet losing its home base, but it's much less hassle than dealing with patrol orders and keeping an eye on the fuel situation.

I cannot find anything that looks like what you're talking about. I checked and the version of the game I have is 1.9.5.12 (I just bought the game a few weeks ago). Could you put a screen print in case I'm missing it?

Thanks

[Aeson]

See arrow

[johanwanderer]

There are two ways (that I know of) to set a fleet's home base. One is in the "Fleet" screen, where there is a "Home base" drop down and "Set home base" button. However, that option limits home base to just planets. The second option is using the lower-left controls as shown by Aeson above. It allows you to set a home base to pretty much any planet/station you control, but sometimes can be a bit hard to use, especially if there are a lot of traffics on top of the station / planet you are trying to use.

Back to your original question, you should "home base" the fleet at the most important asset in the system -- says, the nice defense station defending the Loros fruit mine. That way, the fleet will stay around that base when idle. When they need fuel, they will automatically go to the nearest refueling point to top of. Obviously, the "most important asset" depends on your style of play. If it's a really important system, consider colonizing a low-quality planet there (if there are no alternatives) so that you can defend the planet with ground troops if all other options failed.

[RemoteLeg]

The simplest way is to select your fleet then "program" it to protect the system you want covered.
I find the simplest way is to use the Selection Panel in the lower left hand corner of your screen (picture attached).


Select the fleet then:
1. Set the fleet's home base to the colony/space port/mining station where you want it to patrol.
2. Set the posture to Defend.
3. Set the range of operation to just the base or perhaps the system. Keep it short or the ships will go off chasing every blip on their scanners.
4. Set the fleet to automatic.

Now it should stay around the place you put it and only go off to refuel when the ships' tanks run dry. They should go to the nearest refueling station when this happens then they should return. This will happen automatically.

Did you know that you can do all this even while the ships are being built?
Even though a ship is under construction you can still select it in the Ships and Bases screen. Here you can assign it to a fleet and in the Fleets screen you can program that fleet as I described above. When the ships are complete they will automatically go to their designated area.