Ships made with no fuel

[Fleshbits]

This is really annoying me. It is screwing up my micro big time!

---
My usual:
build ships for fleet from F9 screen
Go to F11 screen and select them since they are orange, its easy to find. Assign to new fleet
Go to F12 screen and select the fleet

As they are being built:
Set attack range to system
Set home system to place I want them to defend

Done
----

They used to come out as they were built fully gased and fly to thier spot.
Now they come out with no fuel on occasion and end up being scatters across the galaxy....
Any attempts to hit the refuel button on the fleet screen ends up making them all try to fly across the galaxy to some common location to get gassed instead of each individual ship flying to its nearest location. For example if one escort in the fleet is sitting next to a gas station in sector F5, but his buddies are in A1, he will fly for 4 hours....

This annoys me to no end.

Can we either have them all come out fully gassed ALWAYS
Have them wait on eachother before leaving for a destination (group travel)
or have them each gas up at the individual ship's closest gas station?

[Oberst_Klink]

ORIGINAL: Fleshbits

This is really annoying me. It is screwing up my micro big time!

---
My usual:
build ships for fleet from F9 screen
Go to F11 screen and select them since they are orange, its easy to find. Assign to new fleet
Go to F12 screen and select the fleet

As they are being built:
Set attack range to system
Set home system to place I want them to defend

Done
----

They used to come out as they were built fully gased and fly to thier spot.
Now they come out with no fuel on occasion and end up being scatters across the galaxy....
Any attempts to hit the refuel button on the fleet screen ends up making them all try to fly across the galaxy to some common location to get gassed instead of each individual ship flying to its nearest location. For example if one escort in the fleet is sitting next to a gas station in sector F5, but his buddies are in A1, he will fly for 4 hours....

This annoys me to no end.

Can we either have them all come out fully gassed ALWAYS
Have them wait on eachother before leaving for a destination (group travel)
or have them each gas up at the individual ship's closest gas station?

If you build your ships at star-ports or space ports where there ain't enough supplies of Caslon or Hydrogen, well... the won't have fuel to power the reactors. A more detailed situation where your ships-yards are and what the resource situation is would be helpful.

Klink, Oberst
Terran Defence Fleet,
Kiadian Penal Colony

[Bingeling]

That is a fuel shortage, you don't want those.

The reason they want to fly across the galaxy out of fuel, is because that is the closest spot where there is fuel. Ships do fuel up when they leave a station, freighters exiting from unload, new ships being built. But if there is no fuel, there is no fuel.

What fuel are you using? The starting fuel is caslon, you can view your designs to see whether they run on caslon or hydrogen. It is on the right side somewhere, and depends on the reactor used.

Go to expansion planner and watch the top table. How many sources are there for the fuel you use? What I already know, is that you either have way too few, or that you build ships in an area where there are not enough gas mines mining your fuel.

Look at the "main" table, filter your resource location, filter on your fuel. Click on them, where are they? Change to "resources by galaxy priority". Filter on your fuel. Which are close? Queue construction ships for all sources near your problem area.

Don't build any ships on a spaceport with a fuel issue. If all spaceports have them, don't build. Consider to manually grab constructors doing stupid stuff like doing anything but building a gas mine on a fuel source, and make them start doing that. If you got resupply ships, deploy one near the problem spaceport, to refuel your state ships.

Fuel shortages are no fun at all. Hunting down all gas mines of your enemy during war, and afterward watch them drive across the galaxy to refuel, can be quite fun.

Make a habit on always queuing a gas mine or two on fuel sources when you get a new colony. Select the gas giant/cloud and use the quick button below to "queue nearby constructor to build gas mine". If you ever wonder "are there really no caslon sources around?", you may try the galaxy map and filter on known resource - caslon.

[Fleshbits]

Nono. They are being built at a station with 20,0000 Caslon

In the example I gave one ship could be next to a station full of caslon, but he will opt to go join his buddies at whatever station is closest to them.

I double and triple quadruple checked. There is no fuel shortage.

It seems the fleet's refuel command means, "Everyone in the fleet, regardless of whether you are together or not, go to the station closest to ship X"

[Bingeling]

If they don't refuel at a station with 20k caslon, and that is not reserved (it is unlikely to be, it is a huge amount), the reason is simple:

Your ships run on hydrogen.

[Fleshbits]

Nope they are using Quantum reactors.
I am loading again. I have a theory.

If all my ships are being built at the same place and are taking fuel stock as they are built. Perhaps it _starts_ with 20k caslon and runs out after some are built.

Is there a way to tell the game "When I use the F9 screen, don't build them at my home station, build them over here?"

[Oberst_Klink]

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

If they don't refuel at a station with 20k caslon, and that is not reserved (it is unlikely to be, it is a huge amount), the reason is simple:

Your ships run on hydrogen.

We need a screenshot, description of what reactor(s) your ships got, please?

Klink, Oberst
Terran Defence Fleet,
Kiadian Penal Colony

[Shark7]

Also, if that caslon is reserved, the ships can't fuel from it, even if there is a ton of it at the station.

If there is no other reason for no fuel, then you need to post this in the tech support forum, and a save game attached to it would be helpful.

[Bingeling]

20k fuel is not a lot if you spam ships on a large spaceport. If you have a decent size fleet incoming on low-ish fuel, they could have fuel capacity of maybe 300 each, be 20 ships, they will all reserve 300 fuel. That is 6000 fuel reserved right there.

At least it is if I am able to do my calculations correct in the morning

The fleet won't necessarily use all that 6k fuel, but they will reserve it until they have refueled.

If I ever get a whiff of a ship lacking fuel outside the "outer reaches of the empire", it is full panic mode to check gas mines. A "whiff" could be one single ship heading off a long way to refuel, a fleet avoiding the central areas on refuel, that kind of stuff.

Peeking at my AAR save, the capital has seen a lot of action. Spamming ship builds, having large fleets coming in for fuel and repair. It has 86k caslon, which is what appears to be in demand, as it has much more hydrogen. There appear to be 4-5 gas mines serving caslon to the capital. The "outer reaches" should have its own fuel supply.

Also, having for instance custom "long range" designs with extra fuel and a talent for having them blown up, would do no good at all for the fuel situation around your spaceport, too.

[Fleshbits]

Yea, it seems I am building too many ships at the one port.
I need a way to spread out the building.

[Bingeling]

Making sure that all caslon sites near the spaceport are in use, and that other parts of the empire has its own mines, would help as well.

Even if you add some new sources, it is probably best to step down on ship building a bit, to allow fuel to catch up. If you read the forum, you will see that a lot of people on manual design leave the civilians on caslon fuel, and let the military run on hydrogen.

Using the build order screen, the AI does do a decent job of distributing builds, but I am not sure if fuel is one of its criteria on where to build stuff.

[fenrislokison]

personally, i've stopped using the F9 screen (i hope i'm not wrong, that's the ship builder helper right?)

I always open the specific shipyard construction screen from which i want a new fleet to spawn, and it's always a shipyard with enough construction yard to build all ships of the fleet in parallel (something like 30 construction yards).

This way, the fleet is already regrouped when it's built and there is no destroyer at the other side of the empire having to go back to the ship leader of the fleet, whether it has fuel or not.

Even when you need defensive fleets, i find it easier to build them in a reliable shipyard (usually my homeworld's equipped with Bakura Highspeed Shipyards), configure their homebase from the fleet management screen, set up stance and range, put them and auto and forget about them. They'll go to their system by themselves and do their job.

Doing this, i never have trouble with dispersed fleets.

I also find resupply ships to be more reliable than newly built shipdyards as refueling location, so when i feel like a sector of my empire will have trouble with refueling, i deploy a resupply ship in the area.

[Bingeling]

I love resupply ships in this game, and I am sad when I play a game where they are not really needed The added benefit is that the civilians won't use them.

Book at shipyard or book at build order screen? For me it depends on whether I really care where they are built or not, which usually depends on the size of the empire. I may also set a home base, but otherwise make sure the fleet leader is built at the spaceport where I want them to end up. It is probably a good idea even if the home base is at one of the spaceports.

With bigger shipyards (as tweaked in the new beta patch), building a fleet at one site will be quicker than before. Even for us weirdos that mostly run with AI designs.