Resupply Ships
Simplest Case
In the simplest case, all you have to do to use a resupply ship is: set up your resupply ship, make sure your ship has resources, and activate automatic resupply
Setting up your ship:
- If your resupply ship is a carrier, attach it to a fleet.
- If your resupply ship is a fleet auxiliary ship, order it to Supply Fleet at a location in space via a Behaviour, or while assigning it to a fleet. (detailed here)
- If you want to resupply missiles on your ships you will need to get the relevant Blueprints.
Getting resources:
Right-click your resupply ship and tell it to Get Supplies. Note that fleet auxiliary ships will also passively purchase resources from free traders.
Activating automatic resupply and repair:
Navigate to the Global Orders section of the Empire menu (under Player Information) and set Automatic Resupply to High, Medium or Low (anything other than Off).
The fleet attached to auxiliary ship ONLY will go to auto repairs if they don't have any order in their queue.
Resupply Ships and Their Capabilities
Two types of ship can be used to provide supplies to other ships:
Auxiliaries
Carriers
Carriers are able to repair and rearm ships that can dock at them (exclusively S and M ships).
Fleet Auxiliary Ships are able to repair and rearm ships of all size-classes including Carriers and other Fleet Auxiliary Ships. Ships of this type also advertise trade offers to acquire resources that they need as long as they are actively providing supplies.
To be clear, the term Resupply Ship refers to both carriers and fleet auxiliary ships.
Activating Fleet Auxiliary Ships
While carriers will always repair and rearm fighters subordinate to them as needed, fleet auxiliary ships must be activated to make them available to ships that require repair and resupply. This also instructs fleet auxiliary ships to acquire resources that they need to rearm ships.
To activate fleet auxiliary ships, either:
- Assign the ship to be subordinate to another ship with Assignment: Supply this fleet.
- Or give it the behaviour to Supply Fleet, and specify a location.
Click on the field labeled Destination: and click on the desired location on the map.
Don't forget to click Confirm to lock in the new behaviour.
This will cause your fleet auxiliary ship to start acquiring resources and will make it available to other ships that you own for resupply.
Note that this step is neither necessary nor available for Carriers.
Supplying Resupply Ships
While repairs do not require resources; ammunition, units and deployables are built to order so, in order to fulfill orders for these items, resupply ships need certain resources.
Determining what resupply ships need:
To find out what a resupply ship needs, right-click on the ship and click on Information. The wares that it needs and the corresponding target amounts can be found in the Storage section of the Info menu for that ship.
Supplying resupply ships:
- You can manually order the resupply ship to purchase resources that it requires.
Note that the amount of scanning arrays needed is indicated in the trade menu in parentheses.
This method is available to both Carriers and Fleet Auxiliary Ships.
- You can manually order one or more of your own freighters to deliver resources that it requires.
The number of scanning arrays that the Nomad needs is also indicated here in parentheses.
This method is available to both Carriers and Fleet Auxiliary Ships.
- You can also tell your resupply ship to Get Supplies.
This will order the ship to look for trades on its own and buy all of the resources that it needs. As long as you know of trades within a few sectors of the ship that are selling the resources that it needs, this will result in a series of trade orders to purchase these resources. You can verify that the ship is going off to trade by looking at that ship's Order Queue.
Note the maximum gate distance over which the ship will look for trades at the bottom of this image. This gate distance depends on the Piloting skill of the ship's captain.
While this is the fastest method by which resupply ships automatically get resources, this is also usually the most expensive.
This method is available to both Carriers and Fleet Auxiliary Ships.
- You can allow the resupply ship to acquire resources on its own.
- Fleet auxiliary ships advertise trade offers for the resources that they need. Free traders will occasionally entertain these offers and spontaneously fly to these ships to deliver resources. Do note, however, that resupply ships deactivate these trade offers when they engage in certain activities such as going into combat.
To activate this, all that needs to be done is to order your fleet auxiliary ship to Supply Fleet as detailed in the section above labeled Activating Fleet Auxiliary Ships.
To verify that these trade offers are active, right-click on the ship's icon on the map and select Trade Offers.
This brings up a menu that details all of the wares that your resupply ship is trying to purchase, and in which amounts.
This is the most hands-off method, but also tends to be the slowest.
Note that this method is only available to Fleet Auxiliary Ships.
Resupplying at Resupply Ships
There are three ways to get ships to rearm and get repairs at resupply ships: automatic resupply, by ordering a resupply ship to resupply all docked ships, and by ordering a ship (or group of ships) to resupply at a resupply ship.
- Automatic: by default, all ships periodically check to see if they need supplies or repairs. If they find a resupply ship that is owned by their own faction, they go there to rearm and get repairs. Preference is given to resupply ships attached to their fleet, with further preference to resupply ships that they are already docked at when they do this check.
When rearming in this manner, the equipment that they get is determined by the loadout level set for automatic resupply. A global policy is set in the Global Orders section of the Empire menu:
Options are: Off, Low, Medium, and High.
In general, Low, Medium, and High sets the number and quality of ammunition and deployables that your ships get when they automatically rearm. Off instructs them to never automatically rearm. Default is Off.
It is possible to override this global policy for each individual object. This is done in the ship's Individual Instructions Menu:
The per-object setting defaults to use their commander's setting. In this way, you could change the loadout level of an entire fleet by setting a level of their commanding ship.
- Resupply docked ships: Order a resupply ship to resupply all docked ships: if you have a resupply ship that has ships docked at it selected, then right-click on it, you have the option to Resupply / Repair all docked ships.
Clicking on this option pulls up the Ship Configuration menu in a mode that allows you to select any of the ships docked at your resupply ship. You could order any combination of ammunition and deployables as well as order repairs for them in this way. Blueprints are required for any kind of refitting, ship upgrades, and restocking/changing ammunition types i.e. (Torpedoes, and missiles).
The menu as well as this procedure is described in more detail in this section of the manual.
- Order ships to resupply at a resupply ship: With one or more ships selected, right-click on a resupply ship that you own.
This will give you the option to Resupply / Repair at the resupply ship.
Selecting this option will pull up the Ship Configuration menu where you can configure your selected ships.
After you have reconfigured the first ship that is shown, use the "Add to shopping list" button and then used the drop-down menus in the top-middle of the screen to select other ships you'd selected.
The above menu, as well as the procedure for using it, is described in more detail in this section of the manual.
Note that capital ships cannot resupply at a Carrier.
They would need either a Fleet Auxiliary Ship, a Shipyard, or an Equipment Dock.