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Hy sorry if that is a noob question or already made elsewhere. I tried to find the information but I did, so here it is.
1st-Is it possible to specify a priority list/line to a number of airplanes to refuel?
2nd-Is it possible to specify which airplane will get priority over others? (disregard the 1st question)
3rd-Is it possible to know how much fuel reserved for the purpose of refuel a tanker have?
4th-When tanker is low on fuel what happen if it have lots of fuel reserved for the purpose of refuel? Does it use it too keep itself in the air? Or does it just RTB even if it is full of fuel reserved for refuel?

I got this situation of 10 F-18 Hornets lining for a refuel, however one of them had much less fuel than the others, if I just let the mission run its course, it will run on fumes (crash), I have to send it RTB to avoid that. Thats why question 1 and 2

In this same situation, before half of the planes get refueled, the KC-130 go RTB, now comes the purpose of question 3 and 4. The KC-130 had around 500nm endurance and the base was less then 120nm, I dont know if it is RTB considering a fuel reserve or if it is RTB because it used all its fuel reserved for refuel and there is just no purpose to stay in the air (like Winchester, since fueld reserved for refuel is the mission payload).

Hope I didnt get too complicated.

Also question number 4, I would like to know what is the reallity and what is reproduced in CMANO. Because it makes sense to me, that when a tanker is low on fuel but it have a mission to refuel other and is full of fuel for other to divert part of this fuel to itself to keep in the air and still be available for other, even if capable of rrefueling less airplanes.

ATA Refueling has a lot of persnickety details to overcome. To me harder than TOT planing. Since V-1.06 ATAR is much smoother, but you still must micromanage refueling assets.

I keep the side doctrine on NO, and change the doctrine on a specific Mission or Group level. I like to figure 4-6 AC per tanker...depending on distances etc.

Do you have a savegame for this?

The game should always calculate how far back to base it has to go and include a reserve.
However, it doesn't always calculate to base, it can also take a tanker into account. And this can be very dangerous.

Let's say you have an F-15 patrolling 500 nautical miles from its base. And 50 miles from the F-15 (at 450 nm from base) you have a KC-135 orbiting.

Now the F-15 will think, oh, I'm only 50 nm from the tanker so I can press till I am very low on fuel. He will still keep a little reserve, but if that KC-135 suddenly reaches bingo fuel and starts to return home your F-15 could be in trouble! And while I think the F-15 is actually checking if the tanker it is calculating off of has the fuel to potentially service it, (devs would have to chime in here for exact details), if there are other fighters around as well this might throw things into trouble.

Because if two F-16s come by and steal the fuel from the KC-135 that the F-15 was counting on, now he might be in trouble again.

Most of this is controlled by the "Use Refuel/UNREP" doctrine. If you set this to "Never", then the F-15 in this example will NOT use the tanker for its bingo calculations and just stick to its own airbase. If you set it to "Always" then it will calculate bingo off any available tanker. As said, when there are lots of fighters around this can cause issues and from the sound of it (10 F-18s) this may be what happened if they were all set to Always for the refuel doctrine.

Thats why I generally do like Dannyp19 and set that doctrine to NEVER until I want someone to refuel (or it is operating so far from its base that it HAS to use tanker calculations or it gets stuck in a "Bingo" situation too much. Of course in that case make DAMN sure that it will have a tanker with enough gas

To specify priority list, generally the sim should handle this I think, except that once someone is on the tanker he will not stop until he is done, he won't give way to someone who shows up late, make sense? If you want to prioritize yourself you can play with whose doctrine you set to Always.

To give one plane priority over all others, set the others to refuel NEVER, and if needed disconnect them from the tanker if they are already on it (by hitting "u" to unassign them) and order the priority plane to "refuel (if possible)" (right click and select that option, note that it only works if refuel doctrine is set to Always!)

Question 3 I think if you select the tanker it will say xxxxx kg to Bingo fuel. That basically is the fuel it has to play with, either to get somewhere or to deliver to other people.

Also note that groups of fighters will refuel at the same time (e.g. a group of four F-15s, order the group to refuel, the group lead will refuel, the rest will just hang there, and ALL of their fuel will slowly increase and at the end they are all topped off, make sense?) So if you have a HUGE group the tanker might not have enough and give EVERYBODY a partial load of gas. Also this takes longer than just 1 fighter so it might also cause a guy who is NOT part of that group to have to wait so long that he runs out of gas.

Hope this all is informative, if you have more questions ask (if something I said is not clear etc). Also next time if you post the savegame it helps analyze what exactly is the issue

ORIGINAL: Dannyp19
ATA Refueling has a lot of persnickety details to overcome. To me harder than TOT planing. Since V-1.06 ATAR is much smoother, but you still must micromanage refueling assets.

Scen authors and players have a frequent habit of making A2AR ops in Command actually harder than in RL, by allocating too few tanking assets (at one point during Allied Force there were reportedly about _150_ tankers available), cutting safety margins too close or (authors only) not including divert airfields.

The refuelling AI in Command is usually pretty smart, but it cannot walk on water or always protect players and scen authors from their mistakes.

ORIGINAL: Sunburn

Scen authors and players have a frequent habit of making A2AR ops in Command actually harder than in RL, by allocating too few tanking assets (at one point during Allied Force there were reportedly about _150_ tankers available), cutting safety margins too close or (authors only) not including divert airfields.

I'm pretty guilty of this. Is there any way an in-game calculator could be developed that would help us better calculate fuel needs? I can go in to the database and look at consumption figures for different bands, but It's pretty hard to tell what an aircraft us actually going to use for X speed setting at Y load.

If I could input the size of my strike group, the type and load and the desired speed and altitude and get an output of how many tankers I need at Z distance from their launch point it would make life much easier. I tried to have a go at this using a spreadsheet, but it got a bit hard with too many options and combinations and needing to input the figures manually.