[rdouglass]

One downfall about having a "Supply Tanker" - they don't resupply your attack ships in combat. Long, close combat can really eat up your supplies quickly in combat. For now that issue is kinda' irrelevant since there doesn't seem to be a firing penalty if you have no supplies, but I think that will soon be fixed (and hence will become relevant) with upcoming patches. Think of having a DN with several WMG's in combat and no supplies to fire more than 2 shots 'cause there out of supplies!!! Remember ships only get 500 supply storage points per engine so even baseships only have 1000 points supply without any other components (that is if I remember right).

I use the tanker concept early in the game (I always start my games low tech), but as my ships / techs get better, I start putting some supply feature(s) on all my ships as well as including tankers in a fleet. I feel (at least in larger ships) the range advantage of sticking a solar collector III is far better than the 20Kt of weapon / cargo I can put on it. Then once I get to Quantum Reactors, I'm usually making nothing but DN's and Base's so 20Kt (for QR's) is nothing for space. The only downfall is that they're pricey, but to be able to have fleets OR ships cruising wherever they want to go indefinitely (of course including a repair ship in all fleets) has some major advantages.