That's more or less what I was proposing, although rereading my post, I didn't mention scaling the rate with size. Make it 1 HS, and have it be 10% of the normal rate, or something like that. In any case, that component will be very useful. If we don't have that, "I lost all of my fuel tanks" will be even more of a death sentence than it is currently.
1. Understandable, although I'd have to check the unrep manual.
2. 100,000 tons is awfully big for early in the game, unless they can be built in factories like orbital habs. Also, can those siphon fuel from the planet?
3. I suspect it's going to be longer than that (1 hour/fuel HS is a long time), but it's not the end of the world.
I did read a US Navy unrep manual (from 1996) while creating the new rules
The largest US navy replenishment ships can transfer 180,000 gallons per hour, dropping to around 40-50,000 for smaller ships. Section 3.2.3.
https://www.maritime.org/doc/pdf/unrep-nwp04-01.pdfI decided to use litres instead of gallons (Sorium is more unstable
) and use the top US Navy rate as the mid-range. An Arleigh Burke holds about 580,000 Gallons, while a carrier can hold around 3.5m gallons of aviation fuel, so those correspond quite well to Aurora fuel tank sizes (using litres as gallons). A US DD will take about 3-4 hours for the best refuelling rate and around 12 hours for the slower end.
The Refuelling Station is a ground-based installation built in factories that is half the size of a research lab for transport purposes. The 100,000 ship-based component is a Refuelling Hub.