Why bother doing a fleet save if the game is going to hang up and I can't even recall my fleets from an expedition. Lost 3 sw's, 400+ cargo's to a black hole. So, FAS not enough to protect flag ships, forced to used expeditions.. then the game is screws up and fleet is lost.. Come on man!!

Yeah sorry to hear bro, they don't compensate for anything as well, so you just screwed out of ships because developers are shit, but keep spending your money, maybe in another 10 years they might get game that works.

secure your fleet to 999 hours in the future .... You will get the gas back for the time that the fleet was not on an expedition ...
This is how time never runs out - and it is absolutely safe .... regardless of whether you are currently in the game or not - the fleet is safe from server failures, hospital stays, etc. for 41 days .....
If necessary, you can manually retrieve the fleet from the expedition and play with it as carefully as possible .....

With this standard security measure, the fleet would not have been lost ....

Outside of the expedition there is a second option to secure the fleet, in case you have more fleet bases than expedition railways - via well-timed colonization flights to planets you have already colonized (just tested - it still works .... you can also make such colonizing flights to moons / satellites) .... But I am no friend of it ... because there can be moments when you are not online in time - and when the enemy scans, you can react badly when you are still offline and your fleet is already back from the security flight ....

Yeah, I will just have manage in there a couple million vespine. 24 hours was costing close to 600k. I don't foresee me being able to have 999 hours of ves for fleet save, maybe 3 days worth but any more than that.. not likely

The gas is only a prepayment for the 999 hours .... if you bring your fleet back after 24 hours you have actually only used gas for 24 hours and the rest will come back with the fleet - regardless of whether you set 24 hours or 999 hours you have, the gas consumption is the same for the actual duration of the expedition ..... It is also a reserve that could be useful in an emergency - like a savings book on which you put money ..... the money is still there, just not in the wallet, but on the savings book ....
actually I wrote it in short form in the last post ..... have you understood it now? you no longer consume because you have set up a longer expedition - only as long as the fleet was actually on an expedition .....

for my fleet associations I use about 1 million gas within 16 hours ...... I do away with 10 million gas at 999 hours - I bring the fleet back manually after 16 hours and still have 9 million gas ... .. This reserve of 10 million must remain - in order to optimally secure the fleet at all times ....

Is just an example calculation for about 1.7 KK fleet .....


PS: in fact I use several expedition railroads .... The war fleet is often longer on an expedition, while the fleet for pirate hunting is manually retrieved daily from several bases ..... I also have Vikings who do not have to be sent on an expedition ... ... I will not explain the exact distribution and costs now ... the example must suffice for understanding ....
PS2: in principle, we play big players with large resource reserves - whether gas, metal, mineral - high reserves also on hydarian crystals .... We do not consume everything for construction or research - we reserve reserves to compensate for losses quickly can - and then build up new reserves again ...... these reserves are always on expediton and are only called back every 40 days to renew these reserves ...... I could easily build a 1.2 KK fleet immediately - but this reserve hidden on expedition is necessary to compensate for losses if necessary ....