Fuel Issue

[erison]

Hi, I'm starting to have an issue with private freighters, there are 400+ fregihters in my empire, and when looking into the resources tab I have 700k+ fuel stockpiled, but when I take a look into my spaceports, all have 0 of it, which means that after any battle I have, I cannot repair and refuel my fleets, or that any new ship has to travel to a mining station to refuel before being useful.

I have tankers in auto that refuel the civilian and military ships all around, but I tried to use them to transfer the fuel to the spaceports and use them to manually transport it, and it is not possible unless using a "trick". That is to load it with fuel, move it to the spaceport and then force it to refit to another tanker design, that way, it leaves all its cargo in the spaceport, but it is not comfortable to do it this way and requires too much micro (and also it feels kind of an exploit). Is the fact that tankers do nothing when ordered to transfer fuel to a spaceport a bug, or is it intended that way?

Any other idea on how to make the freighter transport more fuel to the spaceports? On the freighters tab I've seen 100 are moving fuel, but they move barely 300 out of 4400 capacity and once unloaded, 300 is the refueling amount for just 2 ships..

[BTAxis]

The option to transfer fuel to the spaceport is a little misleading. Fuel tankers only fill up other ships' fuel cells, not their cargo bays. They're not meant to serve as fuel transport; that's what the freighters are for.

Unfortunately, the civilian freight situation is still an unorganized mess, like in DW1. I've got ideas about how to make it better, but nobody's asking me.

[erison]

Well, I guess that then I'll have to build a ton of refuel ships and let them auto refill everything and leave them outside any fleet for that.

[FirstPappy]

And along these lines as well, how exactly do tankers work within a fleet? I've had numerous times where one or two of my ships are out of fuel yet the tankers yellow indicators are more than half full.
Also is there a rule of thumb to figure how may tankers are needed in a fleet per military ships?

[erison]

The tankers yellow bar is its own fuel, the one they use to refuel ships is under cargo when you have it selected, and if the ship is on manual control you need to manually load it up and refuel your fleet.

If you leave them in auto in a fleet, they "theoretically" do the same as outside the fleet (refuel any ship with low fuel, both military or private sector) but they will prioritize the ships within the fleet they belong to.

[FirstPappy]

That clears things up, thank you.
I leave my fleets on manual control most of the time so should I put just the tankers into AUTO or leave them in MAN?

[erison]

I usually leave tankers outside fleets in auto, and the ones on defensive fleets too. For offensive fleets I leave them in manual since I want to move them with the fleet when moving through enemy territory to refuel at will, but that is just my preference at this point. Maybe in the late game I get tired of the micro and change all tankers to auto.

[arvcran2]

The option to transfer fuel to the spaceport is a little misleading. Fuel tankers only fill up other ships' fuel cells, not their cargo bays. They're not meant to serve as fuel transport; that's what the freighters are for.

Unfortunately, the civilian freight situation is still an unorganized mess, like in DW1. I've got ideas about how to make it better, but nobody's asking me.

Two things:

1) Perhaps instead of being idle, non fleeted fuel tankers should load and distribute or mine and distribute Caslon?
2) I am thinking I should ask what your ideas are !

[BTAxis]

Basically just the hub-spoke system others have brought up also. DW2's resource economy shares some similarities with city builder games such as Caesar III and Settlers 2. It can learn some things from such games.

[arvcran2]

Basically just the hub-spoke system others have brought up also. DW2's resource economy shares some similarities with city builder games such as Caesar III and Settlers 2. It can learn some things from such games.

I proposed allowing for civilian fleets where the civilian ships would use the fleet engagement range from home base to limit their area of operations. It could even include fleeted non-fleet military ships that also adhere to the engagement range and home base. This in essence could implement the hub and surrounding area coverage. Large freighters could be assigned to service Hub to Hub distribution.

So you could define civilian templates stating the starting % of: exploration ships, small and medium freighters, mining ships, constructors, fuel tankers, free escorting military ships, free patrolling military ships, and free guarding military ships. (by "free" I mean the current non fleeted system of automated military ships)

The AI could migrate ships to hubs in need of infrastructure, support, and protection.

[BTAxis]

I proposed allowing for civilian fleets where the civilian ships would use the fleet engagement range from home base to limit their area of operations. It could even include fleeted non-fleet military ships that also adhere to the engagement range and home base. This in essence could implement the hub and surrounding area coverage. Large freighters could be assigned to service Hub to Hub distribution.

So you could define civilian templates stating the starting % of: exploration ships, small and medium freighters, mining ships, constructors, fuel tankers, free escorting military ships, free patrolling military ships, and free guarding military ships. (by "free" I mean the current non fleeted system of automated military ships)

The AI could migrate ships to hubs in need of infrastructure, support, and protection.

I think that would be too complex in terms of overhead. For a player it could be decent because it adds some to interaction to the economic management, which is good. But it's a complex system you're describing, so it's a potential AI problem. I'm told the AI struggles with the economy as it is.

I did have a very similar idea for military patrolling though. A fleet assigned to some refueling base, which sends out some of its ships to patrol systems which then summon the rest of the fleet if a problem is encountered. It's not a very useful idea in the context of the rest of the game because patrolling isn't really necessary in the first place, as new problems don't really crop up in previously cleared systems. Also, long range scanners are a thing.

[arvcran2]

Well the concept is primarily to do with a dedicated set of civilian ships to service an area for extracting and moving resources to a colony.

At the very least mining ships are needed, and theoretically, could do the job all by itself.