Tournament transporter fuel
Fuel is the resource consumed by the tournament transporter - the vehicle that carries your horses to tournaments. Without fuel you won't take part in tournaments with your horses, no matter how well prepared your stable is. The whole system, including the local biodiesel farm shop, only works while a tournament season is running.
Fuel and its extras only make sense in the weeks when I'm actively riding tournaments with my horses almost every day - otherwise I wouldn't put anything into a tank upgrade or into canisters, because both disappear with the season anyway.
Fuel powers the tournament transporter
The tournament transporter needs fuel, otherwise you won't get to a tournament with your horses. It's the only resource you need to take part in horse tournaments - no other goods or tickets are mentioned anywhere in the game's help.
Fuel and everything around it is handled exclusively through the local biodiesel farm shop. That shop only appears while a tournament season is running - all of its offers explicitly say that they work for the duration of the season only, and outside it the shop simply isn't available.
The tank refills on its own, canisters speed it up
The transporter's tank gradually refills on its own over time. If you don't want to wait, you can buy a Small or Large refill canister at the biodiesel farm - once you buy it, you get extra fuel for a certain time and the tank fills up faster.
- Small refill canister - a shorter extra supply of fuel
- Large refill canister - a longer extra supply of fuel
The canister's effect runs for a limited time, which the shop displays as the time remaining. On top of that, the purchase gets blocked in two situations - when the effect would last beyond the end of the current season, or when the tank is already full. In both cases you'd be spending money for nothing, so I take it as protection against a bad purchase.
Buying fuel directly has a daily limit
Besides canisters, fuel can also be bought directly and straight away - as a Small or Large amount of fuel. I use this option mainly right before the end of a season, or when I need to send a horse to a tournament immediately and don't have time to wait for the gradual refill.
Direct purchases aren't unlimited, though. The shop keeps track of how many extra fuel purchases you've used that day, and once the daily limit is used up it closes the offer with a message saying no extra fuel is available today. It also shows a countdown to when the offer opens again.
Tank upgrades only apply to the current season
You can raise the tank capacity by buying the Small or Large tank upgrade - the transporter then holds more fuel at once, which comes in handy when you're planning to ride tournaments intensively. These upgrades only apply to the current tournament season though, and they disappear when the season ends, so every time you want to go all out you have to buy them again.
If you already own the Small tank upgrade, you get a discount on the Large one. So it's worth reaching for the smaller one first and moving up to the bigger one as needed, instead of treating both versions as separate purchases from scratch.
