i apologize if this has already been asked, did a google search, nothing came up.

 

why do my tankers refuel my fighters instantly? it is extremely frustrating and defeats the purpose of tankers.

 

I'm guessing i might have accidentally turned on auto refueling? i tried hitting alt-r but problem still occurs. thanks

Most likely it has to do with the range of the particular mission. If you can stand it, launch the fighters as one group and the tanker as another. Auto-refueling is always on but it is supposed to be somewhat intelligent. Others may have better solutions.

More detail of your particular situation would help.

ok for example, i launch 6 tankers with 6 strike aircraft to attack an airbase, they take off together and as soon as the strike aircrafts fuel goes from 100% to 99%, the tankers refuel them and a notification comes up saying they are done refueling and asks if i want them to break off and return to base

ok for example, i launch 6 tankers with 6 strike aircraft to attack an airbase, they take off together and as soon as the strike aircrafts fuel goes from 100% to 99%, the tankers refuel them and a notification comes up saying they are done refueling and asks if i want them to break off and return to base

 

 

This typically happens, iirc, when the range/distance of the intended mission is more than tanking will allow for.

 

I'm guessing that you put multiple tankers into the group to try and account for the long distance.

 

First off, keep in mind that fuel or endurance in HCE is calculated as an expression of "range", rather than, say, kilograms of fuel.

 

What your tankers are doing, in effect, is adding range to the recipient aircraft rather a certain amount of fuel.

 

A single tanker will therefore split its available "range" (i.e. fuel) among the recipient aircraft in the group (they need to be of homogeneous type or else you get further weirdness).

 

In other words, a single tanker attached (in a group) to six recipient aircraft will split its available fuel into six equal shares.

 

So, in terms of gameplay, my usual practice is to attach a single tanker to a group of recipients. Smaller groups will ensure a greater share of the available resources.

 

If its a really long distance, I will put another tanker out there on a rendezvous point (or send it along unattached with the remainder of the group) and then attach that second tanker to the group for a second leg of the mission.

 

I hope this helps, or at least, helps move along the discussion toward a resolution of the issue.

i apologize if this has already been asked, did a google search, nothing came up.

 

why do my tankers refuel my fighters instantly? it is extremely frustrating and defeats the purpose of tankers.

 

I'm guessing i might have accidentally turned on auto refueling? i tried hitting alt-r but problem still occurs. thanks

alt-r will force a refuel so only exasperate your situation.

I think CV32 has the best answer, refuelling has some gremlins for sure.

Was the mission range greater than the range of the tankers? This is a pretty hard one to get around as tankers can't refuel other tankers.

If you follow cv32's advice and have one tanker with the attack a/c and another group comprising only tankers following right on their tail, you can reduce the speed of the attack so as to be able to use F7 (join group) to add one tanker at at a time for refuelling as needed. Because of the way auto refuel is worked out it isn't efficicient to group the tanker with the attack a/c once you are a significant distance from home base conpared to the range of the attack planes so you are stuck with manual shuffling. -

You might also need to send of tankers for the return trip much later and do a manual rendezvous - for this I find the F10 message dialog with time delay very handy.

Thank you for chiming in Don, without quite a bit more detail from Grobbs there isn't anything I can do as programmer guy. We don't even know what version of the game is being used, nor scenario, nor the exact situation. While the game outwardly looks very similar to what it was 10+ years ago, the mechanics and models are very very different so things like version become very important.

Yeah, I was hoping the OP would add more. Until then, we offer what we can and that's all we can do.

you guys answered my question, sorry i thought this was for hce didnt know there was different verisons of hce, and i was just asking in general how to refuel. but now i just launch them seperatly and have them join and then refuel