Refueling Starbase Help

[bbenham]

Hi,
I've designed a refueling starbase. It has 3 or 4 docking bays, about 6 fuel cells, weapons, shields, reactor.. just the basics. It takes about 15 minutes or so and sure enough freighters start fueling it up just fine.

However, if I have a ship, or fleet very nearby and command the ship/fleet to refuel, it Always ignores the starbase and instead will travel much farther to a spaceport.
Also, if I manually command a small fleet to refuel at the Starbase, it goes there, the ships seem to cycle through the docking bay, but none of them ever fuel up.

Any ideas what I may be doing wrong?

Any ideas appreciated. Thank you.

[RemoteLeg]

Refuelling ships get their fuel from your star port's cargo bay, not its fuel tank.
Since you don't mention cargo bays I suspect you haven't added any. The ships don't see your star port as a source of fuel.

[Bingeling]

Just to add. A ship ordered to refuel will try to do so (cycle through as you say). If it has reserved fuel (for itself) in the station's cargo, it will pick up that fuel. If there is no unreserved fuel when it asks for it, it will just "visit and leave".

So look in the station's cargo (double click in the selection panel for quick access).

[RogerBacon]

ORIGINAL: bbenham


However, if I have a ship, or fleet very nearby and command the ship/fleet to refuel, it Always ignores the starbase and instead will travel much farther to a spaceport.

When giving the refuelorder with the fleet selected, be sure to right click on the refueling base and you should see the option to refuel from there. If you right click anywhere else you will only see the more generic "refuel from nearest..."

[bbenham]

It has 3 cargo bays, but as Bingeling points out, it's very likely the station had nearly full fuel cells (they were sitting around 80% fuel), but the Cargo bays must fill up AFTER the fuel cells fill up, so probably no fuel in those yet. That makes sense. I just hope the cargo bays will actually fill up with Fuel eventually. I guess I'll find out. RoberBacon, I did give that order, but as I mentioned, the ships just cycled through the dock without fueling. I think Bingeling really put his finger on it but I need to wait longer to see if the cargo eventually gets fuel in it. These are just starbases out in empty space, so they have no direct fuel source and receive everything from haulers.

Thanks all.

[Aeson]

I am not certain, but I don't think that freighters will reliably deliver more fuel than what the station's fuel cells can hold (and from past experience with stations in deep space I wouldn't necessarily count on even that much). If you want permanent forward refueling points, I would strongly advise you to try to find convenient fuel deposits and build gas mining stations (or starbases with gas extractors) on them. Resupply ships also work, and have the advantage that you don't need to find a conveniently-located fuel deposit; you can just deploy the resupply ship at a fuel deposit long enough to fill its holds and then move it to the area you want it and deploy it over any convenient system body (asteroid, gas cloud object, planet, moon, star).

Energy to fuel converters would broaden your options for permanent refueling locations to any convenient stellar entity (gas cloud, star, supernova remnant, black hole), but they're at the top of a branch of the tech tree that I don't prioritize that much.

One last thing you can do, although it might be considered to be a bit of an exploit, is to take one of the state ship designs and add docking bays, cargo bays, and gas extractors to it. Order it to mine from a fuel source to fill up its holds, then order it to wherever you need it and you can order your other ships to refuel at it. Note that it will automatically return to the nearest spaceport to drop off its cargo if you allow it to fill up its cargo holds, that unlike a real resupply ship it will not filter the resources it mines to take only the hydrogen and caslon, and that it will not automatically resume mining operations after automatically dropping off resources or being ordered to do something else. If I recall correctly, it is also unable to refuel itself from its cargo bays, whereas stations and real resupply ships can.

[bbenham]

I need something early in the game, and don't have resupply ships yet. You may be right about the fuel cells issue. Unfortunately, my only goal here was to stay completely away from systems, or clouds where pirates patrol, and basically have a deep space refueling station setup. Everything seems to allow for it, and I can certainly plant a starbase out in empty space, but the game doesn't seem to allow me to refuel from it, even though it may have full fuel cells. Frustrating.

[Bingeling]

As far as i understand the game, I would not expect a star base in the middle of nowhere (no fuel source) to get any fuel to deliver to others. If it burns fuel, it will request fuel for its own need, but not in excess of that.

If you give it gas mining engines and no commercial component, and put it on a fuel source, it will have fuel but not sell to civilians. So it becomes a military refueling spot (a stationary resupply ship in effect). If you give it a commercial component, it will act as a gas mine, and freighters may pick up fuel there.

Note that I say "Star Base" the class that is not used by any AI designs, not the spaceport class which is sitting above your capital and other colonies building ships and stuff.

[RogerBacon]

Maybe I missed it but did you check the base's cargo hold to confirm that the base actually has fuel?

[Hattori Hanzo]

ORIGINAL: bbenham

I need something early in the game, and don't have resupply ships yet. You may be right about the fuel cells issue. Unfortunately, my only goal here was to stay completely away from systems, or clouds where pirates patrol, and basically have a deep space refueling station setup. Everything seems to allow for it, and I can certainly plant a starbase out in empty space, but the game doesn't seem to allow me to refuel from it, even though it may have full fuel cells. Frustrating.

the problem here is the nearly useless "Fuel Cells": in fact you do not need them !!!!!

or at least you don't need to have so much of them on your Refuel StarBase - what you really need is more Cargo Bays.

just my two cents: re-designs your Refuel StarBase with Cargo Bays instead of Fuel Cells and then order your existent Refuel StarBase to upgrade to that new design.

also: maybe is better to use the StarPort design instead of the StarBase design - in my own game experience I noted that the StarPorts are usually filled with more fuel than the StarBases.

or to order your Building ships to build the Refuel StarBase (or StarPort) directly to a fuel source that would be the best possible solution.