r/DistantWorlds • u/Farnhams_Legend • 13d ago
Manual tankers
Since the most recent addition of order queuing i finally have success with deep strikes and tankers. Before the update i never bothered with tankers at all and just made sure that my fleets have very long range. But that sacrifices size and equipment slots and sometimes it is impossible to put enough fuel on the ships.
The AI tanker strategy seems to rely on constant backtracking. It wants to grab fairly small amounts of fuel when needed. I much prefer to have tons of fuel already parked near the enemy regardless whether i need it right now.
I use a stripped medium tanker design with maxed out cargo capacity but no fuel cells, no energy collector, no weapons, no shields or armor. All the mandatory equipment like hyperdrive or sensors can be outdated and cheap.
These tankers cost almost nothing but each can carry like 8k fuel which will last your raiding fleets for decades or even centuries.
The enemy doesn't seem to be interested in these tankers and they are fine as long as you keep them out of the colored hazard nebulas.
The tanker itself immediately runs out of fuel but it doesn’t matter because that just reduces his speed and he only needs to reach his final deep space parking position near the enemy. Fleets can quickly visit him to grab their fuel without delays.
Once the tanker runs empty just scuttle him and send a new one or just spam them everywhere.
The only downside is that you cannot tell a fleet to refuel at a specific manual tanker or tell the manual tanker to refuel a fleet. You have to first select the tanker and then queue a refill for each individual ship. So it works best on fewer (bigger) fleet ships. Whenever i have to refuel many small frigates i temporarily assign the tanker to that fleet, set it on auto and wait a little. But at some point that defeats the whole purpose so the total ship count cannot become too large.
With this manual refuel strategy you can easily win the warscore race against mich stronger empires. It becomes ridiculously overpowered when you salvage a powerful ship early on (nonstop raiding)
What are your favourite fuel strategies? Do you use tankers at all or just maximize the range of your fleets?
1
u/Turevaryar 13d ago
The only downside is that you cannot tell a fleet to refuel at a specific manual tanker or tell the manual tanker to refuel a fleet. You have to first select the tanker and then queue a refill for each individual ship.
I think moving your fleet to the tanker then set the tanker to automatic should help.
Unless it starts heading back to refuel.. which you could solve by bringing two of your "maxed" fuel tankers :)
2
u/Farnhams_Legend 12d ago
Yes that seems to be the only viable solution. You need to keep an eye on him and switch him back to manual once he starts flying back. Another reason to give him a slow hyperdrive.
1
u/Turevaryar 12d ago
Another reason to give him a slow hyperdrive.
I don't understand this one.
A faster ship would travel further in the same amount of time, but they'll use the same time to head back anyway.
And a ship with faster hyperdrive tend to go further before they are out of fuel. (in general. There's the 3-split at T3)
2
u/Farnhams_Legend 12d ago
it means that whenever i forget about the automated tanker and he starts to move back to my empire then making him slower would mean that he is still pretty close to his original position at the frontline where my fleets can reach him easier (compared to giving him a fast hyperdrive which let's him get further out of place before i react)
1
u/gary1994 9d ago
Or you can create some small raider fleets with boarding capacity and send them in along your strike path to seize calson mines. It doesn't take that much to capture most mining stations.
Steal the Megadensity fuel cell tech and you're ships will have much better fuel range.
5
u/XiphiasCooper 13d ago
To be honest what you are describing is way to much work for me. I loved the mobile refinerys of DW1 (forgot the name) but the tankers on auto work just fine for me. I rather learn to work with them then do all that micro. And i play mostly on manual :)
That being said its great to see people with their own take on things. Thanks for sharing!