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I have been playing DW2 pretty intensively lately, and at the end of this experience I must confess that I do not understand at all how to use fuel tankers. My most successful strategy so far has been to bring a fleet to a complete halt along the route to a distant objective and hope the tanker doesn't decide to continue on toward the objective, as sometimes happens. Even when the tanker is told to go toward a specific ship in the fleet and then put back on auto, sometimes it doesn't complete the task. There doesn't seem to be any clear pattern to this behavior that I can understand and work with.

At other times, the tankers finish the job of refilling all of the ships with no difficulty at all. Again, I fail to understand why this happens only sometimes.

So my question boils down to this: where are we now with tankers and does anyone understand their behavior well enough to offer some guidance?

Yes. All the following is with regard to tankers in a fleet. Though they are more responsive and intuitive than they were not long ago, there's still the prevailing assumption that their job is to keep a fleet fueled, or to serve as a mobile refueling depot.

Under automation, that is not what they do.

They extend a fleet's operational time, under certain conditions. They also spot-fill individual ships with a comparative shortage to the rest of the fleet. They do this better than they used to, and ships now aren't eating as much energy as they used to.

Without player intervention, they perform best when a slow, long-ranged fleet is lingering at a certain location for an extended time. This occurs when a fleet is idling or engaging in a large battle (typically at a major colony). Small or fast fleets, namely raiders or blaster-based fleets, will hardly get use out of a tanker- most often if they get a damaged fuel cell.

With player intervention, as you say, you'll have to have manual fleets set to not refuel, repair, or retrofit, and park them in a safe system or set their Engagement Range to Nearby. The tanker will only start filling up if there's a ship that is in need of fuel- they don't typically try to top off a fleet, they only spot-fill.

Like all automation, if you're setting occasional commands, the automation is disrupted. Tankers are somewhat unique in that they will frequently check to change orders rather than checking only once they've finished a task (recent change, its unknown how frequent that is). Tankers do a fine job following manual fleets, assuming they've been allowed to fill up and rally before issuing fleet orders. Also, tell the fleet to stop first before changing their orders if they're moving FTL.

Regarding occasionally ignoring ships in need of filling, a tanker will allow another tanker to come to fill a ship if it's already on the way, but there's no indication to you aside from finding the tanker on the way to do it. That tanker may be distant. Recent changes made this less likely, but it can still happen. As aforementioned, they may also not top up if the fleet's overall fill is 'good' and no ships are running low. Also, this process can take some time- a tanker typically moves to a nearby location, and once there, if there is a ship that needs fuel, it will then move into the fleet. I have guesses about other possible reasons, such as the automation taking into account the distance to the nearest fuel depot, but I haven't verified any of them. Just certain about these three things (from what I remember right now).

TLDR: Use tankers with large, slow, long-ranged fleets, don't expect them to work like mobile fuel depots, and be prepared to wait a long while if relying on them to top up manual fleets.

I just use them like Resupply ships in DW1.

Send them to a Caslon planet and mine, have the fleet move to them to refuel. Freighters are very greedy when it comes to Caslon and will take every drop from a mine to bring to colonies. So Caslon mines tend to be empty for most of the game.

So having a few Tankers sitting at a Caslon planet means I have a military-only refueling base. I can set them to run when attacked, and have a few escorts to guard them. This is safer and less micro than having them follow a fleet around. Though, if needed they can move to the fleet to refuel it.

Thanks for these suggestions, I'm sure they'll help the next time I take this on.

For manual fleets there probably should be a command like, refuel from own tankers. It should work like a movement order where you order the fleet to a spot and then the fleet to refuel from the fleets own tankers. An alternative to the refuel order.

I find that I often have to manually tell tankers to fill up ships in fleets while they are on manual control.

Jorgen_CAB wrote: Thu Sep 14, 2023 6:47 am For manual fleets there probably should be a command like, refuel from own tankers. It should work like a movement order where you order the fleet to a spot and then the fleet to refuel from the fleets own tankers. An alternative to the refuel order.

I find that I often have to manually tell tankers to fill up ships in fleets while they are on manual control.

Yeah, tankers are ...wrong... right now. It's a huge struggle. Everybody assumes and wants that they work as extra fuel storage for fleets, and instead of programming them as everybody expects them to behave, we are getting explained that we don't understand what they do.

Programming them like: If you're in fleet do the following, otherwise do your strange stuff:
1.) Don't jump ahead of the fleet.
2.) If there are fleet ships that are not 50%+ fuel top them up.
3.) If you run out of fuel, get some and come back
This would make wonders and it would be very intuitive and what people expect and want.

Right now it's a constant source of frustration. Personally I am in the phase where I gave up on them. I just build a few and then ignore them. Micromanaging them was maddening. Clearly they don't want to do what I want them to do. I noticed that they work much better with automated ships and fleets.
My biggest problem with them in fleet was that they were jumping ahead of other ships, right into the middle of enemy and dying there alone, long before any help would arrive.