Does anyone know how to use tankers??

[RhinoDad]

Using Aurora update have not loaded any beta patches. Settings for manual fleets is set to manual for refueling, repairs, etc.

o With all ships in a manual fleet in a given area, order is given for fleet to fly to another location.
o The warships will fly off towards the location. The tanker(s) all loaded and fueled will just stay where they were.
o When the fleet arrives at the location even though they may be almost or just into the red on fuel. The tanker(s) will just remain where they were.
o If tankers on Manuel will just sit there.
o Tankers on Auto will also remain where they were but may fly off somewhere but not to area of their fleet that needs refueling.
o If fleet is on auto for refueling then ships will fly off to fuel location, this will not be to the fleet tanker.
o If tanker flown to area then turned to auto it will begin to fuel some of the ships but will stop before all ships refueled. May or may not fill ships it is fueling completely. May even at some point fly off to start fueling a non-fleet ship.

1. Is there some way to have tanker fly with fleet and refuel them when the fleet stops? Or fly to fleet when it is stopped and low on fuel.
2. What are the settings to get them to act as I imagine a tanker should; travel with fleet and top off fuel tanks when fleet stops.

3. How are you setting things up so that the tanker will top up its fleet. Or do you have to manually move tanker to fleet location each time then switch to auto.

Must be a better way than what I can figure out. Or are they just broken.

[Schatten]

The Tankers dont work most times. dont use them. Their AI is not working at all. You may have 1 or 2 not in fleet at automatic.

[RhinoDad]

Thank you. Unfortunately seems that the program approaches tanker programing in a way that would make it quirky. Thought perhaps I was just doing something wrong.

o When refuel order given ships should first seek refuel from tankers in fleet, then closest place avail for refill, mining bases, spaceports, colonies, independent tankers, etc. (Assets that have Remote fueling device, colony, etc. and fuel cargo)
o Tankers in fleet should act as any other ship in fleet and move with fleet.
o If not wanting tanker(s) in combat fleets then another category of fleet would be refuel. It would form around a tanker(s) and fleets ordered to refuel would seek them out as above.
o This would be similar to what the US Navy did during WW II in the Pacific
o If for game purposes that was not desired, for distance limitation then "refuel" fleets, could not be used.
o For game purposes any fleet could be limited to a given number of tankers to limit distance of operation

For the coding of the tankers …..
o Ships seeking refuel should initiate refueling from tankers in fleet. Refuel from (Tanker Name)
o Algorithm should consider tanker as an asset with remote fueling capability and fuel, not as the active agent. (i.e. colonies, spaceports, etc.)
o Only tanker manually given the order to refuel a ship should be the active agent.
o If tanker in fleet manually ordered to refuel then it will do so and once refueled should move to rejoin fleet.
o Just as other manual ships should do
o If tanker automated and in automated fleet it should trigger a “load fuel at xx” when its fuel cargo is low independently from other ships in fleet.
o After moving to load fuel cargo it should then move to rejoin fleet.

That should end what appears to be code conflicts with other ship and fleet code.
Unfortunately, as I do not know the code I can only surmise based on behavior what the code is instructing.

[Nightskies]

First, tankers do work, just not the way most expect. They're no mobile fuel depot (real tankers are, but in DW2 they are not); they're actors that selectively fill up low-on-fuel targets. They don't try to keep the fleet topped up. Effectively, they extend the operational time of a fleet if they stay in one spot long enough. They don't effectively extend the range of a fleet.

I have to explain the complication with programming tankers; currently, the game has to limit its use of 'locks'- pairing up units with each other as overrides to other agents acting the way they normally would concerning the two units. With ships in fleets, this extends to the entire fleet. As the game is, we can have upwards of 100,000 ships (not even counting fighters), all taking up processing power, updating location, creating new tracked entities (every shot fired creates a moving entity), checking fuel, shields, energy, upkeep... an enormous amount of work. Locks are resource-intense, comparatively, as every time a ship meets a locked condition, it has to recalculate its mission. Hundreds of ships might sometimes check the locked condition, each using processing power to re-do its mission selection when running into the lock. Tankers want to use locks. However, when the processor is already chugging, and the background simulation can't keep up with the game speed, anything associated with locks inevitably slow down to the point that it becomes buggy. The Eye of Sauron- er, Player - further complicates it, devoting more power to what is being seen on-screen, while those off-screen (like your fuel ships) get less. So your automated fuel ship can arrive at a battlefield that the fleet already left, still trying to get to a ship playing in live simulation while it was playing on delayed off-screen simulation.

A current issue with the game is that too many locks are being used. Before the Aurora update, a desirable amount was used, which helped performance, but the Aurora update regressed in this regard. Despite that, overall performance shot way up thanks to how multithreading was improved, but this aspect is being revisited to improve performance.

So, locking a tanker with a ship is undesirable. The ship wants to carry out its mission rather than stop, especially in the case of being in battle. A ship typically doesn't change its mission until a critical trigger occurs, namely, being out of fuel or damaged. The presence of a tanker doesn't override or modify that behavior. Further, there are currently no plans to introduce new unit types, such as the mobile base from DW:U, which did, once deployed, serve as a fuel depot, albeit immobile while deployed as such.

Manual tankers are dumb units; they won't do anything (not counting retreating or auto-refueling, etc.) unless told to do so. As part of a fleet, tankers currently have issues being left on manual and following fleet orders. So they should be left on automatic unless you need to control them manually- but don't. If you want your fleet to fill up more, set the Fleet Engagement Range to Nearby, park it at some remote object like a black hole or a resourceless planet, preferably in neutral or friendly territory, and wait for the tanker(s) to do their job. They will if the fleet meets the threshold for refueling, which I'm guessing is less than half full. Maybe 1/3.

To make greater use of fuel ships, try to make them as fast as possible, even going as far as to make them smaller than the maximum size allows (especially effective on larger hulls). Use smaller and more fuel ships in a fleet requiring on-deployment refueling, as each can only service one ship at a time. Use stealth on fuel ships so they're less likely to be intercepted. Also, set them to manual when first built, tell them to fill up at a gas giant, then set them to automatic after giving the order. They'll mine fuel instead of stocking up from a station/colony. It takes time but saves your empire thousands of fuel, hundreds of thousands if you're consistent about it.

Now regarding the listed questions:
(1) Automatically, they will never fly with the fleet. This prevents them from arriving with/before the fleet into battle. Formerly, they would do this but often got themselves killed because of it. The current system is MUCH better, where they fly proxy to the fleet's path and then fly directly to the ship that needs fuel after the fleet has been in one place long enough for the fuel ship to get into its remote position. As mentioned above, you can park the fleet when it requires fuel and the tanker(s) will get to work, given time.

(2) There are no such settings. It requires patience and the condition that the fleet needs fuel. The tankers won't automatically top them up if none of the ships are low on fuel.

(3) Divorce the idea that DW2 tankers work like US Navy (or any real fleet's) fuel tankers. They do work, just not like real military tankers.

And then addressing the followup response points:

• Fuel ships, being mobile, and due to the lock limitation, cannot serve as fuel bases do. Fleets and ships cannot consider fuel ships as viable refueling locations.
• This was done formerly, and it was a disaster. They died pointlessly all too often, wasting thousands of fuel. The current system, where they are cautious, is far better.
• Tankers in a fleet only serve the fleet they're attached to. It's asking too much for fuel ships to be that intelligent while not violating their purpose of serving the fleet they're in.
• repeat, divorce the idea that fuel ships in DW2 are like real fuel ships
• refuel fleet, cool realistic idea, maybe in DW3 or DW2:U
• repeat, fuel ships extend the operational time of a fleet, not operational range (though it could manually be made to do so, a little painstakingly)

To make sure, I'm not implying you have bad ideas or anything like that. At least, I don't mean to.

[tankacealpha]

Tankers do work, just not supper efficiently.

For example, I am playing on extreme difficulty and facing a major Caslon crunch, my star ports hardly if ever have any Caslon.

However when I built my first Battle Cruiser, it rolled out of the starport empty of fuel because SP had none, no worries though, there was a tanker of the fleet I attached it to, which was stationed in another system, just waiting to fill up my brand new flag ship and allow it to jump off and join up with the rest of Xeno purifier 1 fleet.

So yes, sometimes tankers do work, and if you are facing a major caslon crunch, your fleets are more likely to have fuel if tankers are attached. They dont do nothing, they do help, however don't expect perfect coordinated refuelling behaviour. It is a bit opaque to me how they operate, as sometimes they seem to fill my fleet up and sometimes not, even though my fleets spend long periods idling at starports, caslon mines.

Other observations that relate to this issue.

Caslon deficiency is the most obvious problem facing my empire and its price is sky high, yet civilian mining ships show no interest in mining it and instead prefer to focus on 1% steel asteroids, this would seem obviously bugged to me. Also, what would be great is if I could attach tankers to starports, so they would fly off, mine caslon and dump it at starports, if my startports were filled up it would be a lot easier to keep fleets full also.

[RhinoDad]

Nightskies - Thank you for the wonderful explanation that was very helpful.

[Jorgen_CAB]

I think they could add an order for fleets such as refuel from tankers which simply would order tankers attached to the fleet to come to the fleet and fuel up the fleet no matter it's current fuel situation and no matter what the tanker is doing and as long as the tankers are at least half full (or some such).

The fleet AI might also be able to look at the situation of the the tankers in the fleet and rather than fly to the nearest fuel stations/port they could also call on the the tankers in the same way.

I don't think any of that is unreasonable for a future update to tanker logic.

Tankers will fuel up fleets once they have filled up their tanks and there are ships in the fleet that needs fuel. If you are going to rely on tankers you will have to need patience and not be in much hurry. Also as said... multiple smaller tankers is generally better than a few large ones. More likely at least some are available at short notice.

Tankers also tend to mine fuel if the closest port does not have enough fuel stocks. But they also take fuel from ports if there are plenty of fuel there.

[RhinoDad]

If you want your fleet to fill up more, set the Fleet Engagement Range to Nearby, park it at some remote object like a black hole or a resourceless planet, preferably in neutral or friendly territory, and wait for the tanker(s) to do their job. They will if the fleet meets the threshold for refueling, which I'm guessing is less than half full. Maybe 1/3.

The current system is MUCH better, where they fly proxy to the fleet's path and then fly directly to the ship that needs fuel after the fleet has been in one place long enough for the fuel ship to get into its remote position. As mentioned above, you can park the fleet when it requires fuel and the tanker(s) will get to work, given time.

Unfortunately, they do not seem to work as mentioned, unless "given time" means upwards of a year. (Did notice after writing this that fleet waiting to refuel was not at a resourceless planet. It had some resource but not fuel nor did it have a mine. Perhaps that is the problem.)

Fleet sat for over 1/4 year in system that was enemy territory but no enemy ships. System was patrolled/defended by another fleet that was sitting idle at another planet. No enemy ships even freighters did not show. Fleet tanker was attached to set to nearby then again for another go at it at "engage only if attacked" with same results. Manual fleet with tanker set on auto. Each ship in fleet in or just over red fuel level. [after 1/4 year or so changed to "Engage only when attacked" tanker never returned.][Guess it figured fleet only needed less than 1/3 of the ships with fuel.]

Tanker was in same system mining fuel at gas planet as suggested; but at another planet than fleet. Tanker completely filled with fuel and fuel cargo. Tanker flew to fleet fueled two ships leaving the others vary low on fuel and then headed out of system to a star base 200m plus away to restock fuel when its cargo level was still over 93%, and fuel mine was in system and tanker had been mining there.

It is still much faster and more efficient to leave tanker on manual and fuel the fleets manually. It would be nice if that could be done automatically. Or if tanker in fleet in same system or planet as rest of fleet to click on refuel and ships would head to tanker and refuel.

If given enough time tanker in fleet set to auto will head off to fuel other ships not in fleet even though ships in its fleet are very low on fuel and just hanging out waiting for the fleet's tanker(s).

[Nightskies]

Can I have an upload of the save? I suspect that tanker behavior has already changed since I tested it. It wasn't just me using this method previously. Just to be sure that nothing else is amiss.

[Erik Rutins]

Please zip up and share a save file showing the issue with us if you can.

[Erik Rutins]

Please try the new 1.1.3.9 public beta, which improves this behavior.

Please also see the 1.1.3.9 change notes, which help explain how tankers should work.

[RhinoDad]

Thank you. Sorry, I tend to play these marathon sessions of 10 – 20+ hours; and there was no save game that was around the time of what I was speaking. Generally I just take notes on strange things and then try to find what I am doing wrong then ask. Sorry it took so long to get back to you. It is a bit of a pain as internet connection is a bit of effort to get to.

However, I did try some adjustment as to where tankers were parked, how close/far from fleet and what activity they were engaged in, mining, sitting full. It did seem to make a difference as tankers did begin to move to fleet and start fueling them.

Will probably give the beta you mentioned a try.

[scotten_usa]

I'm on the latest version as of today (19 July), in the middle of a war and find my automated tankers attached to my war fleets have now warped back to a friendly starport to refit.

I know using the tankers in original DW could be a little clunky but I never had to worry about ships 'deserting' in a war.