Pyromancer said:
The fuel depot is located at the border of the Solomani Autonomous Region. Planning started before the Solomani Rim War, but construction wasn't finished when the war broke out.
It'd have an enormous amount of fuel, probably in the range of the "multiple squadrons of battleships, supporting squadrons of cruisers and smaller ships whose fuel needs are many times that of the battleships."
If the Imperium was concerned about war with the SAR, they'd be well-aware that the Solomani would have a significant fleet, so they'd probably have to sortie in force.
That said, I doubt by the time of the Solomani Rim War that anything of significant size (like brown dwarfs) would have gone undetected. They've had millennia to scan down anything of significant size like this and mark them, track them, and put them on star charts. However, given the number of objects that could be refuelled off of, it'd say it would be impossible for the Solomani (or the Imperium, honestly) to have a pair of patrol cruisers visit each of them on a consistent basis (say, more than once every six months, probably longer). They certainly wouldn't have pickets at them unless they were expecting them to take that route for an invasion, so your base idea has merit.
I think a base like this wouldn't be a static installation - because both sides
would visit worlds like this; probably at least once a year (it might be what the ISS does with all those Scout ships in the hemmed-in Imperium) just to see what's going on. Visits would increase with the rise in tensions, but it takes a week for a ship to make a jump - so I'd imagine you'd still have months between sweeps, otherwise the logistical footprint (patrol ships, their crews, their maintenance requirements) would be enormous given all the
possible objects people
might set up a base at.
A fueler might not be jump-capable. In which case it'd be towed in by a more capable "tug" type ship. Such a fueling station would be self-contained, either using contra-grav to hide itself in the atmosphere of the world to evade casual scans or perhaps it might even bury itself on a moon temporarily. But temporary would be the key. However, if the facility were detected, it might have a Jump-capable escape ship on it, or ships, depending.
More likely it seems like something like a converted outdated Battle Tender would probably be ideal -- a huge jump-capable framework. It'd have collapsible fuel tanks to hold all the fuel tankage. While it could jump with a whole lot of purified fuel, it couldn't jump at maximum fuel storage, so if it was detected or needed to leave in a hurry, it'd either drop the excess tanks or jettison the fuel in the bladders out into space before making a quick Jump out of there. The ship would be serviced by many skimmers (since it isn't able to skim itself). These ships would double as oilers to deliver the fuel to starships. Probably after a few bad experiences, these tenders would be Jump capable themselves (to just Jump-1 - it's not like anyone is ever going to catch a Jump-1 ship with enough fuel to jump a half dozen times on a single "tank") so they can bug out on their own if their tender has to suddenly leave.
The ship should be able to fuel up a fixed (but large) number of ships at full capacity; the number would be set by some sort of algorithm determined by the average fleet deployment - perhaps the breakdown would be three BatRons (battleship squadrons) plus their supporting ships - there's little reason to deploy a ship like this for a smaller scale deployment. If there's more ships, the Navy would simply add more fuel tenders. The ship could purify enough fuel to reach maximum capacity in two weeks at worst. The ship would have facilities sufficient for the crews of the skimmers and the tender itself to live on for some weeks (it'd have consumables supplied by other ships).
Of course, such an interesting facility would probably suffer from mission creep, but let's not go there.
If your scenario involves an abandoned facility of this type, it's entirely likely the fueler suffered some sort of breakdown or even an attack and it was abandoned. Militaries are inherently inefficient, wartime ones especially so. For whatever reason, it was simply written off and nobody bothered to go back to salvage it.
