Trade ships assigned to managers help

[unit757]

Hello all,

I seem to be having trouble utilizing the station management stuff, specifically assigned ships. I've searched for guides on it, and what little I found didn't help. So I will explain my problem.

I have an Energy Array, an H2O additives Fac, and a Foodstuff Supply. All have the command relay to. I have a Rahanas (Energy) assigned to both the H2O fac adn the foodstuff, and a liquid rahanas assigned to the foodstuff. They are correctly assigned to the manager for production, and the stations restricted to not bother with NPC stuff. However, no matter how long I wait, or what I do, the ships just fly in circles "searching for trades", despite the Foodstuff clearly needing water, and the H20 having over 200k of it.

The energy freighters each went and got energy cells once for their respective factory, however neither of which grabbed even a half load of it, and then proceeded to fly circles. The Energy array was almost full when they had loaded there.

I have tried every setting, price setting, unrestricted trade, or whatever that I can think of. I've swapped ships from being assigned to the reciever to the shipper, nothing.

My game is modded, but only by whatever CWIR adds to the game.

I have tried using YAT, which works a little better, but at best I end up with a Rahanas transporting 300 energy cells to a food factory thats asking for 60k+.

What am I doing wrong? Does the trade coding in this game just suck?

[UniTrader]

=> Do the Managers have all enough money? Buy Offer generation depends on how much money is available, and Ships just match the available Offers.

=> where are the Stations?

[Thufar]

Does the trade coding in this game just suck?

While I'm sure you could find those on the forum who would agree, and I would certainly say the coding isn't ideal, it far from sucks. I've done what your doing many times without a problem, so its a matter finding out what's not set up correctly. As UniTrader asked, my first thought after reading your post was the manager's money. However, there's some other thoughts I have in addition.

What is your manager's budget? I set my primary goods producers (such as Energy Arrays and H2O Facts.) budgets at a few million. Mid-level factories such as food production at 8-10 million, and so on till top level producers at 50 million or so.

What is your manager's skill levels? I've never hired a manager with less than 14 stars in the top three skill categories. Low skilled managers may gum up the works, I don't know.

Are you sure you've set the managers trade priority with NPCs globally to not trade with NPCs? If you don't do it globally, but only with the individual wares, it won't work (I think I said that right).

I set my producing manager to sell at minimum. I then set purchasing manager to buy at minimum also. Are you sure you don't have something awry in pricing? The producing managers rarely ever run out of money once they've topped up their supplies for the first time.

Do you have skilled trading captains? I always use captains with at least 4 stars in all primary skills.

For me, traders always have worked better being assigned to the purchasing station. This economy seems to be programmed for the consuming economy, as opposed to the supply economy of previous X games.

Lastly, watched pots never boil. Changes in manager settings take time to filter to the captains. Go do something for a little while and then check in. It doesn't take hours; nor does it take a few seconds.

But if I were a betting man, I'd put my chips on the manager running out of money.

Regards,
Thu

[unit757]

Thanks for the replies guys!

At the time managers budgets were set to the recommended level, I hadn't much beyond that to spare, could that have been the problem?

As for locations, they were located in the same sector, but not the same zone, with all set to system wide trading. NPCs were reasonable skilled, with none less then 4 stars in their relevant categories.

Pricing was set for production selling low, and consumption buying high. And restrictions were global, not individual wares.

I'm definitely feeling now that this is something I am going to have to play around with and figure out, I have only just recently started playing, and didn't have much to do with station management when the game first came out, and having most of my experience from back in launch, I didn't exactly walk into this with a "everything should work great!" attitude lol.

Thank you for the advice though, I will try setting my my stations similar to how you did it, and see if that helps. I also downloaded the "Free player to player trades" and "Station push wares" mods off steam, so here's hoping that combining them with your suggestions will help!

[hisazul]

Stop the trade ships, recall the managers and then reassign everything. This should reset station trading script. I personally don't bother with prices since I'm usually self sustained and pricing is irrelevant since money is just going back and forth.

Does your liquid trader have cargo drones? Do stations have them? Try resetting prices to default and giving budgets above recommended. Personally after I settle I generally just dump 50 million on a station and leave it alone... but my last save had around 300 stations so 50mil was like peanuts to me.

[RodentofDoom]

The station needs a few things

- enough funds
- enough cargo drones
- other valid trade destinations within range

throwing money at the first 2 problems always fixes them
the last one can be harder to resolve

dig into your management interface and check trading range
- zone (only where the station is)
- sector (your ships will boost to places but not use jump beacons)
- system (all of devries, or albion etc)
- galaxy (only available through a mod)

check your pricing for sales/purchases in the same way

afaik trade agents are not required on other stations, but you could scoot around setting them up. stations also seem to self manage more succesfully whilst you are somewhere else doing other stuff.

[Nanook]

@ RodentofDoom: The OP is trying to set up trading between his own stations exclusively. And player-owned stations always have trade agents.

[RodentofDoom]

Thanks for the replies guys!

Thank you for the advice though, I will try setting my my stations similar to how you did it, and see if that helps. I also downloaded the "Free player to player trades" and "Station push wares" mods off steam, so here's hoping that combining them with your suggestions will help!

There's also "MitchTech Station Logistics" which is available on steams workshop.

I don't typically bother attempting to automate production chains, when setting up a station I just assign instructions and then check the ware category for products and resources and ensure the manager has a tradeship that can handle them. Where those wares get shipped too I just leave to the automated scripting that the manager uses, and the profits soon start rolling in.

As i mentioned in my previous post 'check for pricing conflicts'
If you've set "Buy low & Sell high" values on products that are a resource on another station you own, your ships will NOT complete any internal trades because the pricing structure at both statoins conflicts.