Fuel tankers

[sven6345789]

Great. Now you cannot even use them to refuel ships manually.
I always used them to manually refuel my fleets. tons of work, but the only way to get some use out of this class of ships.

Now not even that works.

Any ideas on how to use them at the moment? Or should i just scrap them?

[WiZz]

Scrap them.

[MichaelJ007]

Tankers have their problems. I can make a huge list. But they do auto refuel ships quite well in a fleet.

1. In manual fleets, check that all your tankers are on automatic.

2. Add multiple remote fueling modules. With 4-5 modules, they will near instantly refuel a ship when in range.

3. As long as your fleets have a short layover anywhere, the tankers will refuel them. You never need to send your fleet to a station for refuelling ever again.

============

My huge list of problems.

1. In manual fleets, you have to constantly check each tanker to make sure it's 'fully automated', otherwise it does absolutely nothing.

2. Tankers ignore fleet orders. They will follow your fleet or move towards it eventually, but will not stay with it.

3. If you change fleet orders mid flight, the Tankers will continue on the old order.

4. Unless your tanker has a job to do like refuel something, it will be used by the fleet as an attack ship. Despite it being set to evade.. /smh /wtf I NEVER WANT TO SEE MY TANKER ATTACKING ANYTHING.

5. Single automated tankers will try to refuel freighters that have been refueled by a station, and chase the fully fuelled freighter across the entire map trying to catch up with it. The refuel order should have been cancelled the moment the freighter refueled itself at a station.

6 Fully fuelled freighters will 'wait for tanker' that is light years away on the other side of the galaxy, instead of cancelling the refuel order.

7. Ships that are out of fuel and in hyperspace will totally ignore the tanker that is leapfrogging them trying to refuel them. The tanker should be able to stop them when it's close, or issue an escort me order.

8. A tanker with a full cargo hold of Caslon can run out gas, and cannot refuel itself.

9. While most ships and stations can be outfitted with a remote fuel module, its meaningless. Only works on tankers.

10. Tankers will fly right past empty ships to refuel their target, then head off on a new order, leaving the empty ships behind. The algorithm is not bright enough to refuel anything that it passes anyway.

[Thineboot]

Yes, and yes to 1. (automatic), 2. (4-5 will need large tankers), 3. (tankers, plural, you need enough tankers in your fleet).

@ Problems:

1. as far as I have seen the tankers will keep their automatic setting. When I send them manually mining I set them back to automatic - and they come back when they're done.

2. Unfortunately contradicts my observation. It happens much too often that my tankers feel attracted by Gravelix when arriving before the rest of the fleet - and they have ordered strictly to Evade any enemy because the only can pump Caslon on their targets.

3. ... will check, thanks.

4. see 2. Hmm, they follow fleet orders, ignore ship settings (fleet uses ship settings).

2. & 4. Tankers should do their job, mining Caslon and/or refilling at Caslon mining stations, whatever is faster, to keep their fleet moving (and fighting).

5. Even when the target seems to be full it just has to move a bit and thus using up a tiny amount of fuel and thus there is little space for another drop of Caslon and puff, it can be refilled. Numbers show it's full, button says otherwise and when you check it in game editor you'll see an active up-arrow, hit it without changing any rounded number, and the ship is filled again. That doesn't mean the tanker will stop...
Tankers will move across the map to fill ships knowing they'll run out of fuel themselves in doing so. There is work to do for sure.

6. Yeap, and not only freighters, war ships, too.

7. That's the opposite of 6., and as bad as 6.

8. see 5.

9. True not only for this component or role. Furthermore, why has a tanker have to have a mining engine? It's a tanker, not necessarily a mining ship. Yes, it helps to have one, especially when it comes to AI-tankers. But we have all those nice Caslon mining stations... but only a single active latest design instead of multiple designs for different usages of the same ship hull. Hope that will change...

10. That's why we are still ahead of Skynet, at least on PCs. We see (and hopefully process) these things, an algorithm has to be executed to see and process these things.

[Thineboot]

Great. Now you cannot even use them to refuel ships manually.
I always used them to manually refuel my fleets. tons of work, but the only way to get some use out of this class of ships.

Now not even that works.

Any ideas on how to use them at the moment? Or should i just scrap them?

You can refuel as long as the tanker has Caslon loaded. Loaded as in Cargo Bay.

[MichaelJ007]

Ref 1. constantly checking that tankers are on automatic. This is in case I lost a tanker and replaced it, or added an extra tanker to a fleet, or had set the fleet to automatic for some time, then later back to manual. Some of it just my paranoia no doubt. Better to be sure than sorry.

I tend to design my ships to carry about 350-400 caslon, and my tankers to have a cargo capacity of 4000. Then I add 1 tanker for every 8-10 ships in the fleet. So a fleet of 20 ships will have at least 2 (maybe 3 tankers). Enough to fully refuel everything at least once.

But, if tankers were too efficient, then the whole point of limiting fleet movement by having them require fuel would be moot. There must be trade-offs.

The current game has no limit on fleet size or efficiency. Maybe some kind of command point limit would be nice. (e.g., admiral bonus only affects X ships, or is divided between all ships, or something like that.) Then adding tankers would count against your command point limit.

[Erik Rutins]

Please try the new 1.0.4.1 public beta update and let us know if it helps:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=383383

[praetorreich36]

Please try the new 1.0.4.1 public beta update and let us know if it helps:

https://www.matrixgames.com/forums/view ... 1&t=383383

I did notice in the new beta (1.0.4.1)that tankers once out of the yards, and if there is a Caslon mine nearby will go to it, and instead of mine just transfer fuel from the mining station there. They will even seek out a ship to refuel.

But ones after they are constructed that are NOT near Caslon mines, will have to be directed to the nearest one. But once they top off and once you set them to auto they will seek out ships to refuel. I also noticed they will fill up, to the maximum level and go out to refuel ships.