automated ships refueling in the middle of a fight

[dostillevi]

I've noticed on a number of occasions that my defensive fleets will engage in combat, use up a bit of fuel powering their weapons, and then decide it's a good time to fly to another system and refuel. I'm pretty sure they're just cowards, but I'd love it if automated ships would ignore secondary concerns like refueling when there is an immediate task at hand such as enemy ships engaging locally.

[btd64]

I agree. This has happened to me as well.[:@]
Cheers

[Canute0]

You know you can set the refuel threshold for fleets somewhere at the empire policy ?

[dostillevi]

Yep. The issue though is that the ships burn significantly more fuel when firing their weapons. There is a much higher chance that, regardless of the threshold, they'll hit it during combat than during any other activity. Using an efficient design for local defensive ships that minimizes fuel tanks exacerbates the problem.

[Canute0]

Using an efficient design for local defensive ships that minimizes fuel tanks exacerbates the problem.

Looks like they arn't that efficient then you thought.
Maybe you should add 2 more fuel cells and 1-2 less weapons to that design and 1 more ship to counter the lower firepower.

why you don't set the refuel threshold to 0 ? I think that solve counter your problem.

[Strat_84]

It has absolutely nothing to do with the fuel threshold and changing that setting can't fix the problem.

I already reported this several months ago, and it was improved in a patch (back then ships of defence fleet kept refuelling all the time, even with 90% of fuel left in tanks).
But even if it happens less often now, the ships still tend to refuel in the middle of fights while they don't lack fuel at all.
The only way to definitively get rid of the problem would be that this refuel action is given a lower priority, so that at least ships keep fighting when enemies are close instead of stubbornly going to the fuel station.

[dostillevi]

@strat_84 I am guessing there is an equation that calculates the rate of fuel consumption over time that is used to determine when ships should start heading to a refueling point. The thresh hold may in fact be the minimum amount of fuel left in the tanks when the ship gets to a refueling point, or something like that. The game must calculate based on rate of consumption in order to ensure that ships are able to make it back to refueling points in time though.. I think the drastically increased rate of consumption during combat affects this formula, basically causing it to think the ship will run out of fuel very soon and needs to refuel immediately.

[CyclopsSlayer]

Also the AI irrationally will sometimes choose an out of the way Gas Mine as the 'prime' refueling point for the entire empire. I noticed the other night it had 6 fleets all heading to the same refuel point. Even after they arrived it took forever...

[Strat_84]

@dostillevi: No need to guess, it's more simple than that. [:)]

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Elliotg actually said these fleets were programmed to keep tanks fulls so that they can immediately move for distant objectives.

[elliotg]

Thanks for the report. This fleet behavior is improved in the next build so that fleets will tolerate lower fuel levels when in battle.

Elliot