All ships carry a certain amount of fuel, determined by the Tanks which you’re carrying (allocated during the ship designing phase). Note that you can research more advanced types of Tanks to store fuel more efficiently.
The amount of fuel carried by a ship or a fleet will determine its Range. You will only be able to reach systems in range of your ships, and you risk reaching a point of no return if you don’t have enough fuel.
It’s generally a sound strategy to equip scout ships with more fuel, so they will be able to make longer travels in unknown space, and to have shorter supplies of fuels on invasion ships, to save on space. Beware, though! That means you might have a reduced range in your fighting force. This could be a problem if you have scattered colonies far away from your own home worlds, as your main fleet might be unable to reach them if they were attacked.
So how do you refuel your ships? The easiest way is to just have your ships stop by a system you own, and they will automatically resupply. That also implies that it’s usually a good idea to own systems in strategically important locations, to function as “refueling points”.
If you can’t afford that luxury, there’s a number of things you can do: equip freighters with refueling modules to constantly resupply your fleets while on the move, sign diplomatic agreements with alien races to allow your ships to refuel at their star systems, steal fuel from alien races' star systems (cloaked ships only), or you could equip your ships with Stellar Energy Converters to passively increase their fuel stocks whilst in star systems (very useful for long range scouts and fuel tankers).
Polaris Sector will be released on March 22nd on the Slitherine store. Ready your ion engines!
