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All Forums >> [New Releases from Matrix Games] >> Distant Worlds 1 Series >> The War Room >> Fuel Problems?

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Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 1:21:29 PM

Scraphound

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Joined: 2/17/2014
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I suffered major losses due to my inability to refuel fleets.

I'm relatively new to the game so I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong. I ordered a fleet to refuel at the nearest point. They traveled to a gas miner owned by an ally I have fueling rights with.

Then they all clustered around the resupply ship and NONE of them refueled. They just sat there while an enemy fleet ravaged my undefended colonies. Finally I had to order them to limp back on empty to my nearest space port. It was infuriating.

Is there something I'm missing here? Do I need a planet and a spaceport to efficiently refuel my fleets? I'd give anything to not have to deal with that headache again. I love complexity and depth, but managing fuel for my fleets has to be the least fun thing about this game. The fact that I'm still playing is a testament to how great everything else is.

Post #: 1

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 1:27:52 PM

Deathball

Posts: 117
Joined: 4/3/2012
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Two possible causes:
1. The mining station had all its docking ports occupied.
2. The mining station didn't have enough fuel to resupply the entire fleet.
To keep your fleets fueled you need to ensure sufficient supply through gas mining stations. Make sure that all your colonies have at least 2-3 sources of caslon/hydrogen nearby. When operating within enemy territory scout out possible fuel sources and deploy a resupply ship beforehand.

(in reply to Scraphound)

Post #: 2

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 1:40:53 PM

Bingeling

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Short version: I doubt that resupply ship had any fuel in its cargo.

I assume your fleet is not something crazy. Like 40 cruisers, or something similarly giant. Fuel can be one of the fun challenges of this game...

Large spaceports are a good spot to refuel. If not, you got a local fuel shortage. Multiple large fleets hitting the same spaceport is likely to run it dry even if it has lots of nearby gas mines.

I have a habit of always booking a fuel mine when I get a new colony. Select the source, and click the "gas mine here" button below the selection panel (as long as you have enough expansions for those buttons to appear).

The resupply ship thing sounds odd. It has to be deployed on a fuel source, and it has to have the same fuel that your fleet uses. Or, reputedly, it does not have to be at a fuel source, but it needs one to fill its cargo with fuel. If empty, it also needs some time to mine fuel. By double clicking the selection window with the resupply ship selected, you open it in the ship list. Do this and inspect its cargo. For anyone to refuel, it needs unreserved fuel in cargo.

It sounds like for some reason there was no fuel on your resupply ship.

A trap in fuel management is mixed fuel in a fleet. You have a nice alien cruiser on a hydrogen reactor in a fleet of your caslon powered ships. This fleet becomes a pain to refuel (it needs both types). If the resupply ship is on a pure caslon source, the fleet will not want to go there (but you should be able to tell it to do that).

A resupply ship should manage to refuel two fleets, but there is a feature that may have the AI send the second one somewhere else. The first fleet with refuel order will reserve enough fuel to fill its fuel tanks from empty to full, even if it has half fuel. If the second fleet gets refuel order (at nearest), the first fleet may have reserved too much for it to consider the resupply ship. You may know, though, that there will be enough fuel for both (the ship should mine more too). In this case manually right-clicking the resupply ship with the fleet selected allows you to order it to refuel at that specific ship (even if it is short of fuel). This could give the "standing outside" behavior you observed if there is no fuel to be had.

That way of specific ordering is useful also for repairing/retrofitting at the right spaceport, refueling at the correct spot, loading/unloading troops at the correct colony, attacking the correct target... Often I do not want things to be done at "nearest", I have specific ideas about where to go.

(in reply to Scraphound)

Post #: 3

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 1:42:52 PM

Bingeling

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Joined: 8/12/2010
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Also, fuel shortage is a major pain. During war, bust every enemy fuel mine you can locate. There is much enjoyment in watching your enemy's out of fuel fleets cross the entire galaxy to refuel at an ally's spaceport.

< Message edited by Bingeling -- 2/17/2014 2:43:08 PM >

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 4

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 2:32:14 PM

Tophat1815

Posts: 1824
Joined: 1/16/2006
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Pagliacci

I suffered major losses due to my inability to refuel fleets.

I'm relatively new to the game so I'm not entirely sure what I did wrong. I ordered a fleet to refuel at the nearest point. They traveled to a gas miner owned by an ally I have fueling rights with.

Then they all clustered around the resupply ship and NONE of them refueled. They just sat there while an enemy fleet ravaged my undefended colonies. Finally I had to order them to limp back on empty to my nearest space port. It was infuriating.

Is there something I'm missing here? Do I need a planet and a spaceport to efficiently refuel my fleets? I'd give anything to not have to deal with that headache again. I love complexity and depth, but managing fuel for my fleets has to be the least fun thing about this game. The fact that I'm still playing is a testament to how great everything else is.

Do you have a save of this situation?

What version of distant worlds are you running and what is it patched up to?

Finally did the situation resolve itself? Did you find out what the problem was? I have had allies,unknown to me at the time change their political relationship with my empire.

(in reply to Scraphound)

Post #: 5

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 2:41:43 PM

Bingeling

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Joined: 8/12/2010
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quote:

ORIGINAL: Deathball

Two possible causes:
1. The mining station had all its docking ports occupied.
2. The mining station didn't have enough fuel to resupply the entire fleet.
To keep your fleets fueled you need to ensure sufficient supply through gas mining stations. Make sure that all your colonies have at least 2-3 sources of caslon/hydrogen nearby. When operating within enemy territory scout out possible fuel sources and deploy a resupply ship beforehand.

1: As long as it has any, they should just queue up. I don't think you can build them without docking ports.

2: As long as there was some fuel, one ship should fill at least some fuel.

I think it is a resupply ship problem. Either not deployed, or not deployed at a fuel source. For a ship doing mining, there ought to "just about always" be some fuel free since it adds some fuel for each mining tick.

(in reply to Deathball)

Post #: 6

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 6:38:51 PM

Scraphound

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Joined: 2/17/2014
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I'm guessing the resupply ship was running on empty and my fleet was waiting for it to slowly gobble up gas. Lesson learned.

By the way, I started a new game as a pirate faction. I randomly called them the Narsil Coalition. Narsil just being something alien sounding that I completely made up.

When I started the game my pirate faction was occupying the Narsillean system. Was that complete dumb luck or does the game actually look at your empire name and create an appropriately named system?

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 7

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/17/2014 6:50:38 PM

Bingeling

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Your fleet was probably not waiting, it was idle. Look at individual ships and their order if in doubt. Idle because it failed to refuel.

As for the name, I'd say dumb luck. If you don't enter a name, one will be generated that is usually connected to race, system, government... I did the same and ended up in the Hypure System.

(in reply to Scraphound)

Post #: 8

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/18/2014 9:06:59 PM

Scraphound

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Joined: 2/17/2014
Status: offline

quote:

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Your fleet was probably not waiting, it was idle. Look at individual ships and their order if in doubt. Idle because it failed to refuel.

I checked. It said they had a refueling order. Not sure what exactly the problem was.

The guides say I should focus on clones instead of other troopers. I'm not sure where to clones. I didn't see anything in the tech tree, but maybe I missed it.

Also, is there like an IRC channel or something players of Distant Worlds hang out at. Just curious. Thanks.

(in reply to Bingeling)

Post #: 9

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/18/2014 9:27:58 PM

Bingeling

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Less guides, more playing

I am not much of a troop guy, and tend to end games before I advance far in tech. There are two different thing. One is mechanical troops, the other is a cloning facility. Both are researched, and I assume in the ground tech part of the tree. Cloning could theoretically be in the medical facility part of the tech tab, but I doubt that.

Sorry for being too lazy to check...

I have never been to any DW hangout apart from this one.

(in reply to Scraphound)

Post #: 10

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/18/2014 9:39:39 PM

Ardilus

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Joined: 12/30/2012
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Pag, cloning is found along the medical tree under high-tech. Clones are useful when you are spending a lot of time at war, but elite troops ("planetary defense" along transport tree under high-tech) are guaranteed to be much stronger in the earlier years. Both facilities cost the same to build and maintain, and following elites with clones of elites later on can be a potent advantage. However, while still developing it is less expensive and much easier to obtain improved assault, improved defense, and the following tech giving +50% def bonus, along the infantry tree under weapons, all of which will be applied to elite troops when you have the time to research it.

(in reply to Scraphound)

Post #: 11

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/18/2014 9:51:05 PM

Ardilus

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Joined: 12/30/2012
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Robots are found along the construction tree under energy. These used to be much more useful before shadows, especially for weaker species, but in my personal view are now more or less useless as there is no tech tree providing bonuses such as there is for infantry. Even the weakest species now will find better troop strength per credit ratio by investing some research into infantry. Of course, everything is up to the player, who might find their research investment more worthwhile in weighing very heavily toward energy.

< Message edited by Ardilus -- 2/18/2014 10:52:32 PM >

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Post #: 12

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/24/2014 9:21:56 AM

Sirian

Posts: 174
Joined: 11/29/2012
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I had a similar experience when playing just yesterday.

I had a large fleet (~20 ships) and ordered them to refuel via the button "refuel". They ignored my deployed and stocked up to the roof resupply ship that was waiting next door and instead insisted to traverse the whole galaxy to refuel at someplace inside my empire. To "convince" them to "really, really, really" use the resuply ship I had to:

- select the fleet
- rightclick on the resupply ship (not just anywhere in space)
- select "refule at [shipname]"

then they would graciously go there and refuel. Even now, only about half the fleet got refuelled, despite there being more than enough fuel for all. The other ships just docked and flew away with empty tanks. I wouldn't really call that a "thrilling" expererience. Manually babysitting the other ships then got the refuelling job done.

Speaking of Narsil, you might want to have a look here: Narsil

Regards, Sirian

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Post #: 13

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/24/2014 6:32:40 PM

Bingeling

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Was that fleet very large, by chance? Or made up of ships with very large fuel tanks (your own designs)?
I think this could happen (not tested in a long time):

22 ships of 500 fuel capacity gets refuel order. They got about half fuel each.

The resupply ship has 10k fuel.

The first 20 ships reserve 500 fuel each (10k total).
2 ships does not find any fuel.

The 20 ships refuel with a total of 5k fuel (since tanks were half full). The ship has 5000 fuel left, and the two straggles exit with no new fuel.

The fleet would probably look for another refuel option if told to refuel, since the resupply ship did not have enough (11k required).

(in reply to Sirian)

Post #: 14

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/24/2014 7:43:53 PM

ReadeB

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If your fleet has mixed fuel requirements (Caslon and Hydrogen) and the resupply ship has one and not the other, your fleet would ignore it and look for a location with both fuel types in stock.

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Post #: 15

RE: Fuel Problems? - 2/25/2014 7:16:49 AM

Sirian

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@Bingeling and @ReadeB (if you were replying to my post)

I checked the cargo section of the resupply ship before and after the resupply order (the distinct "refuel at
*this* ship) and there was enough fuel on board. After the order about half of the cargo was reserved. After the second refueling command (the manual "please really go there and refuel, I know you just did and didn't get any fuel"), the resupply ship still had a substantial quantity of hydrogen in its cargo.

I know that DW can be confused if fleets have different fuel requirements so I always keep fleets fuel-uniform.

Its no big deal since I always check if my ships really do what they are told and so can catch any misinterpretations quickly enough, but its strange. I might have to do a few more experiments with resupply ships.

Regards, Sirian

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Post #: 16