Resupplying ships?

[Keego7237]

Is there a way to resupply ships without taking them back to a planet?

[Suicide Junkie]

Make a fleet.
The ships in that fleet will share supplies, so if you add a ship with lots of supply tanks, it will fill up all the others.
The tanker can then go back to the planet to get more.

Also, you can build ships with solar panels on them. Allow them to soak up the rays in a trinary system and you'll be resupplied in no time.

[Fyron]

In that fleet, put a base. Bases have built in quantum reactor ability, so they will resupply any ships fleeted with them. Remember that supplies are pooled and shared at the end of the turn, not immediately.

[oleg]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:
In that fleet, put a base. Bases have built in quantum reactor ability, so they will resupply any ships fleeted with them. Remember that supplies are pooled and shared at the end of the turn, not immediately.<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">Thankfully, it'll be disallowed in the next patch. At least that is what I learned from patch info.

[Fyron]

There will be an option to disallow it. Hopefully, the default settings will leave a lot of these new changes that can be turned on and off in the current state that they are in (pre-patch).

[Baron Munchausen]

Originally posted by Keego7237:
Is there a way to resupply ships without taking them back to a planet?<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">1) Supplies are like water, they seek the 'lowest' point. So, if you fleet your ships together and make a supply ship that is mostly supply storage bins you will be able to keep your combat ships 'topped off'. The supplies in the ship with the highest capacity will go down first. If you make several supply ships you can rotate them and keep your fleet supplied in a 'conventional' fashion.

2) As pointed out, fleet your ships with a base. This is a great way to keep an operating squadron on a warp point or some other advanced location without having to return for resupply after a few combats or scouting missions. Fortunately the 'bright idea' to disallow this in a patch has been modified. Apparently it was considered 'unfair' because the AI wasn't smart enough to do it. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif Well, don't dare teach the AI to do it, too, just remove the option from the game! Deh! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon8.gif

3) Research Stellar harnessing and put Solar Panels on your ships, or many solar panels on one ship and have it act as a supply generator for a fleet. This is good for long-range missions but it takes a fairly large number of (expensive) solar panels to replenish fleets that get into combat frequently or are moving at high speeds for more than a few turns.

4) Research the Quantum Reactor. Just one ship with one of these in a fleet acts as a base and refills all supplies every turn. It is a late-game tech, though. Fairly expensive to reach.

[ May 26, 2002, 15:35: Message edited by: Baron Munchausen ]

[Skulky]

Don't send your supply ships back to base if you can help it, takes way too long if you have really brought an entire 20-30 ship fleet out there (wherever that may be) instead just bring along a colony ship and build an advance base. Plus by the time you use up 3-4 cruisers/bcruisers of supplies you should have accomplished your mission. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
The logic behind this is that if you send back your supply ships and rotate them then you will have little supplys cause they will use them all up getting there.