refuel bug

[ericv]

Has anyone ever noticed the refueling bug?

Suppose you have a TF somewhere, in this case consisting of 4 DD's with max fuel of 4625 and current fuel of 2700 +- per ship.
- split the TF in 2 2-ship TF's
- select one and refuel at sea. Now the ships in the refueled TF will have max fuel, the ships in the other one around 800.
- select the other and refuel at sea. Now both TF's will have max fuel (?!) [:-]
- combine the TF's and you are good to go again.

Of course I mean the last part sarcastic. I don't think this is intended behaviour.

[ericv]

This is the TF after above mentioned trick. Weird right.

I tried it with different kinds of TF's. Transports and Surface Combat seems to work a lot. Tankers (with full operation points) seemingly not at the moment.

[BBfanboy]

Are you sure there were no other TFs in the hex or passing through the hex?
And your unit screen says the TF is at sea near ****** (a redacted place). That message can appear if the TF is in a port hex but not docked, which means it could still draw fuel from the port.

Have you tried this experiment more than once?

[ericv]

The TF is at sea, 3 hexes from that port. it was the only TF in the hex.

I've tried it since in a test game a dozen times.
This trick worked with :
A Carrier TF at full sea, with nearest land 10 hexes away.
A BB TF at full sea (PoW, Repulse, 4 cruisers and 4 destroyers)
A couple of transport TF's.

Most ships in the TF ended up with full fuel, depending on the Ops point left.

Sometimes it doesn't work however, although I am not sure why, Tankers don't seem to work.

It is scen 1, december 1941.

[BBfanboy]

Tankers at sea can only transfer fuel from the ship's own bunkers, not from their cargo tanks. AOs can pump from their main tanks.
I am surprised because I have been playing the game for years and have had occasion to cross-refuel TFs and recombine them but never got full fuel in both TFs. Whatever fuel increase there was in one TF had a corresponding decrease in the other TF.

BTW, are you playing as IJN or Allied?

[ericv]

It is very surprising.


I am playing as allies. I've started up a test scenario 'head to head' I'll document it a bit more clearly. One moment.

[ericv]

Ok. I created a testgame. With a TF consisting of 4 DD's that moved at mission speed from San Francisco to PH.

This is their location after a 2-day turn cycle.

[ericv]

the same picture with the contents of the TF visible.

[ericv]

The same TF with more detailed information.

[ericv]

As you can see their fuel is at 3976. I now create another TF. So I end up with 2 TF's each with 2 DD's

TF 1 :

[ericv]

And TF 2

[ericv]

Sorry about the underlay of the other picture.

Anyway.

Now, I replenish this TF at sea :

[ericv]

Now I switch to the other TF, which has lower fuel as expected.

[ericv]

However, If I press replenish at sea for this TF. This one gets set to full, and the other one remains full!

TF 1 after replenishment

[ericv]

tf 2 after replenishment of TF 1. Look at the ops points and obviously the full fuel.

[ericv]

finally, the 2 TF's recombined.

As you can see, they went from 3900 to fully refueled without any other TF in the area far away from any coastal hex.

[ericv]

I hope this makes it a bit more clear. I've tried different setups.

I am not going to make screenshots of them all,

One condition which is easy to check is that the first TF that gets replenished, needs to get to full fuel otherwise it doesn't work.

This works with Transport TF's, Surface Combat TF's (mixed with CA,Cl, DD), Air Combat TF's.

I haven't got it working yet with a Tanker TF. Wether they got fuel on board is not the point.

The point is fuel gets created out of thin air.

[ericv]

If you want to check it yourself, here is the save I used.

It is Scenario 1. Version 11.26b

[RichardAckermann]

Cool finding. This game is still full of surprises after so many years.

[GetAssista]

Yeah, good find!
I can second this one. Also manifests itself sometimes when you refuel your combat ships from merchants' bunkers. Some types of ships seem more prone to the shenanigans than the others. E.g. does not work for CVs or BBs refuelling each other, also it seems hard to replicate this for IJN ships (tried it in my test scenario just now).
On the other hand in my experience large Allied AKEs can sometimes generate fuel out of nowhere for combat ships if you have enough turns to cycle through. Had this happen in my AI games on a few occasions, yet to find the exact conditions for this to become possible.