Refuel/Resupply orders without joining fleet

[Father Tim]

Can I refuel a ship without any kind of special equipment.  I have a survey ship that fell short of Earth but cannot seem to figure out how (if possible) to transfer fuel.

Nope.  Somebody needs to have fuel transfer equipment / refueling hub, etc.

Or use SpaceMaster to directly edit the amount of fuel on board.

[MarcAFK]

You need a fuel transfer module, or hub to transport from or to a ship. Only one of the ships needs to have the module.
Or if its at a spaceport that also contains the ability of a hub. Your tankers need fuel transfer modules.

[logancapitalist]

Thanks for the info! Can a standing order be used to prevent critically low fuel situations?

EDIT: I think 'refuel' when less than 20% standing order might do the trick?

[MarcAFK]

Yes. But I believe automatic refuelling standing orders might be bugged at the moment? I recall seeing a lot of people asking about it.

[Black]

Fuel one is working, but I believe it does not consider standard tanker as valid location for refuel. Ship needs fuel hub to be considered by the command.

[Geezer]

Fuel one is working, but I believe it does not consider standard tanker as valid location for refuel. Ship needs fuel hub to be considered by the command.

I made a tanker and filled it with fuel.  I gave it the order to join and refuel the fleet that had a ship with 0 fuel.  It didn't work.  The tanker still has 100% fuel and the ship in the same fleet still has 0 Fuel.  So are you saying this is a bug, Black?

Edit - My tanker has the 50,000 LPH refueling system module.

Edit - Finally got this to work by deleting all movement orders and standing orders for the fleet.  Then refueling occurs.

[Black]

Fuel one is working, but I believe it does not consider standard tanker as valid location for refuel. Ship needs fuel hub to be considered by the command.

I made a tanker and filled it with fuel.  I gave it the order to join and refuel the fleet that had a ship with 0 fuel.  It didn't work.  The tanker still has 100% fuel and the ship in the same fleet still has 0 Fuel.  So are you saying this is a bug, Black?

Edit - My tanker has the 50,000 LPH refueling system module.

Just tested this, my tankers joined my tug and refueled it. But if both refueling and refueled ships are tankers, then it didn't work, that seems like a bug, because if your tankers get stranded you will not be able to refuel them.

Tried it with two tanker fleets, I had one completely unload its fuel to Earth and other fleet joined it and tried to refuel it. Refuel from own tankers is not working in this case either.

[SpikeTheHobbitMage]

Fuel one is working, but I believe it does not consider standard tanker as valid location for refuel. Ship needs fuel hub to be considered by the command.

I made a tanker and filled it with fuel.  I gave it the order to join and refuel the fleet that had a ship with 0 fuel.  It didn't work.  The tanker still has 100% fuel and the ship in the same fleet still has 0 Fuel.  So are you saying this is a bug, Black?

Edit - My tanker has the 50,000 LPH refueling system module.

Edit - Finally got this to work by deleting all movement orders and standing orders for the fleet.  Then refueling occurs.

Have you researched in-transit refuelling?  If not then ships can't move and refuel at the same time.

Fuel one is working, but I believe it does not consider standard tanker as valid location for refuel. Ship needs fuel hub to be considered by the command.

I made a tanker and filled it with fuel.  I gave it the order to join and refuel the fleet that had a ship with 0 fuel.  It didn't work.  The tanker still has 100% fuel and the ship in the same fleet still has 0 Fuel.  So are you saying this is a bug, Black?

Edit - My tanker has the 50,000 LPH refueling system module.

Just tested this, my tankers joined my tug and refueled it. But if both refueling and refueled ships are tankers, then it didn't work, that seems like a bug, because if your tankers get stranded you will not be able to refuel them.

Tried it with two tanker fleets, I had one completely unload its fuel to Earth and other fleet joined it and tried to refuel it. Refuel from own tankers is not working in this case either.

Does the empty tanker have its minimum fuel set to 0?  If so I wouldn't consider this a bug.  If not then yes.  The reason being that you would otherwise get the problem where two tankers get stuck trying to refuel each other, letting the rest of the fleet run dry.

[Black]

Does the empty tanker have its minimum fuel set to 0?  If so I wouldn't consider this a bug.  If not then yes.  The reason being that you would otherwise get the problem where two tankers get stuck trying to refuel each other, letting the rest of the fleet run dry.

I actually tried both situations and in both situations there was no fuel transferred to empty ships. Well I posted it in bug thread, so maybe Steve will tell us if it is WAI or not. The thing is you can transfer MSP from one supply ship to the other, so I presumed that this would work for fuel transfer as well.

[Lightning]

I have a similar issue, I have 6 survey fleet without fuel.  The only way I found is to join the fleet, select a random target and order refuel from own tanks, detach, send tanker to the next.

When the tanker arrives at your fleet, you can have your survey fleet target the tanker and use the "Refuel from stationary ship" order.
I can do the same thing in my situation, but again, that makes the process not automatable.

Every time I've tried refueling from a tanker like that, I've had to change the speed of the tanker fleet to 0 for the order to show up.

[Black]

Every time I've tried refueling from a tanker like that, I've had to change the speed of the tanker fleet to 0 for the order to show up.

That is most likely because you do not have Underway Replenishment researched. If you try to use the command on station without engine it should work even without Underway Replenishment.

[Father Tim]

I have tanker/supply ship that I want to give repeating orders to for moving to and refueling/resupplying space stations in Sol.
But I can't do it.
I can only give it orders to Join & Refuel/Resupply.

But I don't want it to join the target fleet.
I just want it to move to the target fleet, Refuel/Resupply the target fleet, and move on.
(If it joins the target fleet, I have to babysit the transfer, then detach the ship and re-enter the orders. But I want this to be automated.)

Am I overlooking another option that allows this to be automated?

The easiest form of automation (for now) might be to return to the Jump Tender paradigm, and have the 'supply' ship (with fuel, maintenance, and possibly ordnance) as part of the fleet, but wait on each jump point as the survey is conducted by sub-fleets.  When the survey is done they all meet up at the next jump point and refuel & resupply (& possibly re-arm) before jumping.  When the supply ship runs low, it can return to a major colony to fill up while the subfleets survey.

The downside, of course, is that now you need one supply ship per survey fleet.

[skoormit (OP)]

I have tanker/supply ship that I want to give repeating orders to for moving to and refueling/resupplying space stations in Sol.
But I can't do it.
I can only give it orders to Join & Refuel/Resupply.

But I don't want it to join the target fleet.
I just want it to move to the target fleet, Refuel/Resupply the target fleet, and move on.
(If it joins the target fleet, I have to babysit the transfer, then detach the ship and re-enter the orders. But I want this to be automated.)

Am I overlooking another option that allows this to be automated?

The easiest form of automation (for now) might be to return to the Jump Tender paradigm, and have the 'supply' ship (with fuel, maintenance, and possibly ordnance) as part of the fleet, but wait on each jump point as the survey is conducted by sub-fleets.  When the survey is done they all meet up at the next jump point and refuel & resupply (& possibly re-arm) before jumping.  When the supply ship runs low, it can return to a major colony to fill up while the subfleets survey.

The downside, of course, is that now you need one supply ship per survey fleet.

That's a really good way to approach it. I'll probably do something like that for the time being.

My hope is to be able to position "Pit Stop" fleets at all gated jump points and give cycling orders to tankers to deliver fuel to the pit stops.
In theory, this can reduce the fuel range required for ship designs that make intersystem trips. If refuelling is available at every jump point, ships only need enough range to move from one JP to the next.

I can set all of that up now, but I have to manually perform the refuelling every time a tanker arrives to deliver fuel to a pit stop.

[Lightning]

Every time I've tried refueling from a tanker like that, I've had to change the speed of the tanker fleet to 0 for the order to show up.

That is most likely because you do not have Underway Replenishment researched. If you try to use the command on station without engine it should work even without Underway Replenishment.

I do have it researched, though I did design & build the tankers prior to that.

[Black]

Every time I've tried refueling from a tanker like that, I've had to change the speed of the tanker fleet to 0 for the order to show up.

That is most likely because you do not have Underway Replenishment researched. If you try to use the command on station without engine it should work even without Underway Replenishment.

I do have it researched, though I did design & build the tankers prior to that.

The fact that tanker was build before the tech was researched should not matter, there is no component to install on the ship.