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Dr. Duh -> RE: TF refueling (9/18/2009 1:05:06 AM)
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I'm not sure, but I think what you're describing is something I've run into, and is a reason why on many longer routes I end up always just changing it to a one-way trip by setting my destination as the new home port (then doing the same thing at the other end for a one-way trip back):
For a single-leg trip such as a return to homeport, the TF fuel calculation seems to work ok in that the overall sum needed will show up as green for the TF as a whole so long as it is less than the overall sum of fuel available to the TF (shown in upper left). What you may see though if you look at the ship details on the TF screen are some ships that have their endurance listed in red because they can't make the trip on their own fuel - they will need unrep. Since the overall TF numbers are green though, you know that any ships in that TF will be guaranteed the unreps they need from other ships in the same TF. By definition, the ship(s) providing fuel will not need to go below their own needed fuel to complete the mission (return to homeport).
If though you are defining a round-trip, this planning algorithm and determination of what gets marked red apparently doesn't take account of your setting of the fueling option and/or understand that your mission destination will provide an opportunity to refuel as needed for a return trip.
Thus in your example (I think) what is happening is you've defined a round-trip but even though the TF as a whole has enough fuel to make the destination, when you need to perform your first unrep your fueling ship won't give up enough fuel because it is reserving enough not only for itself to make the destination, but to complete the round-trip as well?
This way of planning fueling works properly for missions such as patrols or surface combat etc with an end-point defined in a non-base hex, but doesn't work well for round-trip long-distance transport/cargo missions. I wouldn't call it a bug, but perhaps there is room to ask for an enhancement here?
Perhaps if the mission type is transport/cargo/airtransport the endurance/fuel estimation routine should assume that if the trip destination is different from the home-port (i.e. that after reaching the destination and "completing" the mission that an additional leg to proceed on to the home-port is implied) then unless the fuel setting is "do not refuel" that it should assume that up to a full fuel load for the TF will be available at the destination hex (generally a good assumption no?). This way those long transport missions won't get marked red overall when there's plenty of fuel to make it one-way but not enough for a round-trip w/o refueling. The routine that calculates how much an unrep source can give up would also have to be modified to be cognizant of if it were a transport mission and if so to only require enough fuel reserved to make the destination, not the return trip as well.
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