They certainly do "facilitate the assistance and refueling of the Fleet Carriers". What they don't do is make the player-driven market in Tritium entirely obsolete. Whether they should is a matter of opinion, of course.
Actually this is just a technical issue on the server side. Several updates to it during the Thargoid War could have contained a fragment of code that broke the initial meaning, as it was not a regular traffic site, being overlooked by both the players and the QA Team.
As I said at the beginning, I had taken an alternative route away from Colonia Brigde and I only got close to it at the final positions where in 1 out of every 4 or 5, you found between 100 and 200 tritium.
Of course, I have not encountered other carriers or commanders along the way, and the station records (logs) confirm this.
In Colonia I visited most of the stations with the same result and the carriers do not have tritium and many are stranded.
The information that Inara may give about them is directly false.
Inara is updated by player action. If the player does not go to Inara, his Carrier is giving out outdated information.
Here some argue as if this were a question of "lore" and it is a technical question.
The programmer can accommodate a routine or procedure where at the day's refresh at 8 AM, all the Tritium counters are initialized as if the tanker had arrived (as happens in real life) and resupplied them.
If instead they have a timing system that generates 1 ton per hour, you get what we currently have. Which means that it takes approximately 10 days and 42 minutes to generate 250tn.
Ineffective, inefficient and outside the purpose of Colonia Bridge.
Fact, kill story.
The Data:
Arrive to Station/Mega Ships and buy 20tn of Trituim
About at 7:45 (at morning) I buy 8 tn of Trituim
Only 2 Commander in the zone...
This is a server-side design and algorithm problem. Neither Lore nor market rules.
And the same for assistance missions.
There is nothing more to add.
Regards.-