Gas question

[Zandi]

Hey,

Love the game, even though it's breaking my brain

I tried putting a gas collector on my military ships (with the idea they would just refuel at a gas planet), however even clicking on one and selecting mine, doesn't actually top up the fuel (they do mine, and they seem to then take it back to the space port). What am I doing wrong? Or is that just not possible?

[Bingeling]

You are trying to break the game, that is wrong

You are probably on the path of "state mining ships" which some love and I consider trying to break the game.

For your question: It does not work, military ship refuel at suitable locations (gas mines, colonies, resupply ships...). You may possibly have your military ships bring mined stuff to a spaceport if they got some cargo space.

[Zandi]

ah that's a shame, but makes sense why it's not allowed

thanks a lot for the explanation

[Canute0]

Fuel is made from gas, but gas isn't automatical fuel.
Thats why Resupply ships are made for, And Resupply ship are the only ship which can refuel itself from gas at the cargo hold.

[Orion03]

It works like this

make one ship that can mine gas and have a large cargo hold, and docking points for the group.

Get that ship to mine gas and fill up it's cargo with fuel.

Get the other ships to refuel from that ship, you can only do this manually by right click on the ship and say refuel from ship x

So the other ships in the group now refueled, but the original ship isn't

So you need to refuel that original ship at another ship.

so you need 2 ships with large cargo and gas extraction.

there was a post about sometime back but I am not allowed to link to it for you

[Aeson]

there was a post about sometime back but I am not allowed to link to it for you

Is this the one you were talking about, or was it another one? (Bottom of the main post; see 'self-refueling fleets' and 'a rant on resupply ships.')

tm.asp?m=3649225

[RemoteLeg]

I made a short video that describes refueling here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dEBC4HSoGeg

It's not as technically detailed as the excellent post mentioned above. It's intended more for new players so they can quickly get an understanding of this feature of the game.

The important point to note is that extracted fuel is put into the cargo bay and not added to the fuel tank of a ship. The way to get more fuel in a ship's fuel tank is to collect it from another ship's cargo bay. The same applies to energy to fuel converters.
This is a very simplistic view, but that's the gist of it.

I hope you find this helpful.