Fleet Tanker
The advantages of fuel on hand are tactical and strategic. One can continue activities where there is no fuel, and bridge gaps between areas of of operation where one could normally not go, allowing one to avoid obstacles and do an end run around heavily defended bottleneck systems, a strategic advantage. Also, one can operate in a theater without approaching heavily defended fuel resources, while one does something interesting about the situation, which is a tactical advantage. Civilians can bridge gaps in the operational range of merchants extending their effective operation area past natural obstacles.
Tankers dedicate as much resource as possible to fuel tankage, sacrificing anything possible to achieve this. They are slow, nearly undermanned, unarmored, unarmed. They are a big ball of Liquid Hydrogen in a bag with a jump drive that let's them keep up with the fleet. Usually, they are accompanied with a hidiver to go GET the fuel, and refine it as gathered to bring it back as pure fuel to store on the tanker- not even a refiner is permitted to detract from fuel carried on the tanker. It's mission is ideally, to present to the fleet on demand it's weight in fuel, or as close to that percentage as possible when the need is at hand.
What the fleet tanker is for fuel, the supply ship is for everything else- munitions, CHOW, spare parts, hull armor and pressure hull components, spare computers, cabling, life support consumables (other than LOX or LNIT which are carried on special purpose tankers), all this and more are carried on supply ships, giving the fleet extended independent supply times and ranges to cut itself free from logistical supply lines and points, to go and peruse it's mission.
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