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Manual control in this game is the worst I've ever seen in any game! It's a sad nightmarish joke where sometimes ships don't move when they're ordered to and sometimes ships move without any manual orders. I never had such problems with manual control with that worthless paradox garbage stellaris and I'm sad that I have to admit that.

Fuel tankers don't move in a manual control fleet when the fleet is given simple, safe move orders. Yet I see the Artificial Ignorance automation controlled tankers move with the fleet into combat. Incredibly stupid on both parts.

Now there's manually controlled ships in a manually controlled fleet that move back to the flagship automatically after they perform a single mission. Totally stupid automation that makes playing on manual control a really frustrating nightmare. I prefer to move my ships back manually as there are many times when I want to use a ship for multiple bug hunts. How stupid would it be if I sent out the fleet flagship to do a simple bug hunt? Yeah the whole fleet would stupidly play follow the leader, yet more Artificial Ignorance to screw things up. Now I circumvent this totally ignorant instant recall nonsense by sending out whole fleets.

I tried setting up a transport fleet with 19 transports in it. A mere administrative fleet construct so I could keep my transports in a single fleet to easily keep track of them, never would I give that fleet a fleet order. I built the transports at different colonies so that I could pick up troops at each one and then transfer them to other colonies. I'm only building one type of troop facility at each colony and want to use transports to move unis around so each colony will have each type of unit. I ran clock after the transports were finished as I was working the boring and annoying space bug hunt with multiple fleets running around. Next thing I know 17 of the 19 transports were at the same colony because they moved to the stupid flagship in some kind of perverted ignorant instant recall nonsense that ended up being a waste of time and fuel. The other two were on route. Screwed up my plan to load each transport at the colony they were created at. I had to waste time and fuel to send the transports back to colonies so they could pick up troops. Incredibly Stupid!

What don't the devs understand about KISS Theory, Keep It Simple Stupid?! Why can't we have an intelligent simple manual control system where ships move when manually ordered to and don't move when not ordered to?

The Artificial Ignorance is pathetic, as is the case with every game. It's a sad case of GIGO - Garbage In = Garbage Out! An old programming saying that needs remembering with the rise of AI.

Is it really to much to ask for that ships and fleets under manual control move when manually ordered to and don't move when not manually ordered to? Is it really too much to ask that under manual control we are free from the pathetic Artificial Ignorance that makes the AI empires so pathetic? Please give those of us who want to play with our ships on manual control the kind of manual control that isn't so ignorantly frustrating where ships move when we manually order them to and don't move when we don't manually order them to.

Manual control is pretty good. Especially once you get the hang of fleet management.

Parrius wrote: Sun Oct 12, 2025 4:30 pm Manual control is pretty good. Especially once you get the hang of fleet management.

I would go with unintuitive, but much of it eventually makes sense once you figure it out.

I do have some issues with manual control, but when I do, it is usually because the automatic control is not working the way I want it / expect it too. Which means it is more of an issue that just manual control.

I would like a "disperse and pick up troops" order for transport / invasion fleets. Having my invasion fleets moving en mass from planet to planet to pick up troops is too slow, but kicking every transport ship that is not fully loaded from the fleet, and then adding them back in when it is time to invade someone, is tedious. A disperse and refuel / repair / upgrade would be nice as well. As it is I tend to kick out ships that are damaged and out of fuel and add them back in later.

I didn't read the entire rant, but STRONGLY agree with the fuel tanker issue.

I typically keep a couple fleets on manual to direct a large amount of firepower on key targets. This is typically around 10-15 ships including 2 fuel tankers. Without fail, moving the fleet always works great except the fuel tankers just don't move. You might call this "As Designed" and Troll a response, but that's not helping improve the experience for players. If I give manual orders for a fleet to move, I expect the tankers to join the fleet, or AT LEAST lag behind the fleet by only a bit. I don't expect them to sit far far in a distant land.

A Fuel tanker assigned to a fleet IS ABSOLUTELY a mobile fuel station, extending the range of that fleet, just like naval fleets. Currently the only way I can get those attached fuel tankers to come to the fleet is to select the fleet, right click in space and say "fuel from tankers". The fleet stops, waits, and eventually gets fueled up as the tankers wake up and come and do their job from across the universe where they were sitting. Works great, and I appreciate that part, just not the 20 minute wait for my tankers to come from where they were sitting.

For god sake don't keep saying this is how it should be.

bbenham wrote: Sat Nov 01, 2025 9:49 pm I didn't read the entire rant, but STRONGLY agree with the fuel tanker issue.

I typically keep a couple fleets on manual to direct a large amount of firepower on key targets. This is typically around 10-15 ships including 2 fuel tankers. Without fail, moving the fleet always works great except the fuel tankers just don't move. You might call this "As Designed" and Troll a response, but that's not helping improve the experience for players. If I give manual orders for a fleet to move, I expect the tankers to join the fleet, or AT LEAST lag behind the fleet by only a bit. I don't expect them to sit far far in a distant land.

A Fuel tanker assigned to a fleet IS ABSOLUTELY a mobile fuel station, extending the range of that fleet, just like naval fleets. Currently the only way I can get those attached fuel tankers to come to the fleet is to select the fleet, right click in space and say "fuel from tankers". The fleet stops, waits, and eventually gets fueled up as the tankers wake up and come and do their job from across the universe where they were sitting. Works great, and I appreciate that part, just not the 20 minute wait for my tankers to come from where they were sitting.

For god sake don't keep saying this is how it should be.

If the fuel tanker is on Auto within a manual fleet it will follow the fleet at some distance and refuel ships when necessary. At least as long as they have enough fuel in their cargo holds.

I use manual fleets like this all the time.

If you set the fuel tanker to manual within a manual fleet it will not follow the fleet, you have to tell them what to do manually. This is so that you manually can decide when they go fill up their cargo with fuel or mine for fuel. It would be difficult for the game to know if the tanker are suppose to follow the fleet when you give the order or stay and mine for fuel or go fill up their cargo holds separately from the fleet.

When you set a fleet to manual tankers will still be set to auto per default, this way they will service the fleet using the normal tanker logic.

As far as we know this is the intended behaviour for tankers within a manual fleet if set to manual or auto.

Jorgen_CAB wrote: Sun Nov 02, 2025 1:14 am If you set the fuel tanker to manual within a manual fleet it will not follow the fleet, you have to tell them what to do manually. This is so that you manually can decide when they go fill up their cargo with fuel or mine for fuel. It would be difficult for the game to know if the tanker are suppose to follow the fleet when you give the order or stay and mine for fuel or go fill up their cargo holds separately from the fleet.

Understood, however, Since it is normal to occasionally divert fleet fuel tankers to refuel or mine for fuel, it should have been easy enough for the developers to implement logic that says "Ignore fleet orders while refueling", and once fully refueled, they again join and follow the fleet like any other ship. This would have made FAR FAR more sense than "Ignore fleet orders while under manual control". The way they implemented it, gives the sense that it's entirely broken with no solution in sight, since they simply don't respond to fleet orders. There's no way any player would implicitly know to set a fuel tanker to Auto while it's in a Manual fleet.

While this may be intended operation, it's respectfully, not the best implementation, and likely an easy fix to correct it.
Rant over.

bbenham wrote: Sun Nov 02, 2025 2:20 pm Understood, however, Since it is normal to occasionally divert fleet fuel tankers to refuel or mine for fuel, it should have been easy enough for the developers to implement logic that says "Ignore fleet orders while refueling", and once fully refueled, they again join and follow the fleet like any other ship. This would have made FAR FAR more sense than "Ignore fleet orders while under manual control". The way they implemented it, gives the sense that it's entirely broken with no solution in sight, since they simply don't respond to fleet orders. There's no way any player would implicitly know to set a fuel tanker to Auto while it's in a Manual fleet.

While this may be intended operation, it's respectfully, not the best implementation, and likely an easy fix to correct it.
Rant over.

But then they are not manual but semi automatic... now you order them yourself while in manual mode and switch them to auto when you want the AI to control them.

To me this makes the most sense rather than have some in between semi AI or script controlling them.

In general... just leave them on auto and they should work just fine. I also think it is possible to have them on Auto and give them an manual order to go get fuel or mine a planet and then directly switch them to auto again. It should basically do that order and then the AI would decide what it should do which should generally be to re-join the fleet after that.

When you set a fleet to manual the tankers are defaulted to "Auto" not "Manual", this is intended behaviour. So... they are not set to manual unless the player specifically do so. This means they will follow the fleet if you give it an order.
I use manual fleets with tankers all the time and they always follow the fleet if they have enough fuel. In my opinion this work pretty well.

If you have a save where you can show this is not the case I would like to see this and I bet the developers would too. Tankers should generally follow the fleets around for obvious reasons. So if you have examples where it does not it would be interesting to investigate why that happens... we can usually find out what is wrong by testing.