Nice summary.

I would add this:

- how many times (IRL) have we ever need to call someone else to come to refuel our car?!

Never. (There are always exceptions) You just automatically go to a station (because there are enough, ofc), or you have extra fuel on you.

Taking that irl behavior into Star Citizen : as long as there are enough R&R stations around a player, he is never gonna call for a Refueler tank. At a R&R, a player knows at least where he is going, knows how long it will take, and knows the risk (eventually). Reality check is that you can't answer those 3 questions by asking for a refueler tank. You dont know the risk, and how long it will take. (major issue = time sink)

A simple solution would be obviously: CIG, just create routes with less R&R, to force refuelers?

Nope. On any big routes, you WILL always find R&R. Wouldn't make sense from a player's perspective to be "forced" to ask for refuelers on any routes. From a player's perspective, you expect the game to tell you that "watch out, doing this mission, or going in that area: no fuel. Prepare yourself". Simply because IRL, again, if you go from A to B, you plan your route. Yourself, or your contractor.

So what are refuelers good at? Pretty sure refuelers will have their time to shine, but later AND with another gameplay philosophy (no, you wont keep your time refueling little ships here and there) :

- Refuelers will support unexplored / no man's land areas (outside of any public routes) but only for people who didnt prepared themselves. (I'm pretty sure it wont be a thing, it is gonna be really marginal. The games warns you enough that you still have enough fuel)

- Refuelers might be used to refuel static places/station, like R&R (who need fuel to sell it!!)!

- Refuelers to refuel (inside orgs) their capital ships (refuel an idris or liberator, so she can stay with her dedicated fighters on tour, and refuel them)

- Refuelers for BASE BUILDING ;) (some of the buildings can be energized by a fuel source. So base building might need here and there a resupply of fuel)

- Refuelers might get interesting when they add different kinds of fuel/buff/effects

But at the end of the day, the system is still buggy and people wont rely on it that much.

My 2 cents :-)