Why?

[RegisterMe]

1. I have a gas miner set to automine methane in a system with gas resources and a station that buys methane. It refuses to mine. Why?
2. I have a mineral miner subordinated to a station that demands ore and silicon. It is in a system one jump from the station. It refuses to mine. Why?
3. That station has several thousand refined metals in storage. Two jumps away there is 20k demand for refined metals, yet the station's subordinated autotrader prefers to ship 200 e-cells somewhere. Why?

So the general question is why is the game so opaque, and what can be done to allow us to interrogate situations like this to figure out what is happening?

[Pesanur]

1. - When you order a ship to fly somewhere, when it reach the destination, it keep the flight and wait order. Remove this order (and any other in the order list) to make it to start mining.
2. - Make sure to check the option to not trade with NPC ships for raw materials. If the station is buying the ore and the silicon, then it not have need of the miner ship to keep the supply.
3.- Add more trader ships to the station.

[RegisterMe]

1. - When you order a ship to fly somewhere, when it reach the destination, it keep the flight and wait order. Remove this order (and any other in the order list) to make it to start mining.
2. - Make sure to check the option to not trade with NPC ships for raw materials. If the station is buying the ore and the silicon, then it not have need of the miner ship to keep the supply.
3.- Add more trader ships to the station.

1. Yup, I'd already done that. There are no orders preventing it from doing anything, the only active order is auto-mine.
2. Yup, I'd already done that. Other miners are working fine for that station (albeit only mining ore, and not mining silicon).
3. I could, but that doesn't explain whatever the station sales logic is that prefers selling 200 e-cells over selling 600 refined metals.

[mr.WHO]

1. I have a gas miner set to automine methane in a system with gas resources and a station that buys methane. It refuses to mine. Why?
2. I have a mineral miner subordinated to a station that demands ore and silicon. It is in a system one jump from the station. It refuses to mine. Why?
3. That station has several thousand refined metals in storage. Two jumps away there is 20k demand for refined metals, yet the station's subordinated autotrader prefers to ship 200 e-cells somewhere. Why?

So the general question is why is the game so opaque, and what can be done to allow us to interrogate situations like this to figure out what is happening?

Regarding methane - I found in a hard way that when map say minerals/gas it doesn't mean that all type of mineral and all type of gas exist in that sector.
For example Nopileos' Fortune II it has a gas deposits, but not the methane.

[Scarecrow]

You're not making much off those E-cells.

Tell it not to sell them in the Station Overview screen.

[Kintanar]

"1. I have a gas miner set to automine methane in a system with gas resources and a station that buys methane. It refuses to mine. Why?"

Have you prospected with probes the sector to know which type of gases are there? Perhaps there is not methane in that sector.

[Gregorovitch]

3. That station has several thousand refined metals in storage. Two jumps away there is 20k demand for refined metals, yet the station's subordinated autotrader prefers to ship 200 e-cells somewhere. Why?

So the general question is why is the game so opaque, and what can be done to allow us to interrogate situations like this to figure out what is happening?

The answer to that one is that your station trader makes more money from the ecell deal than a refined metal deal. Why? Because it calculates profit per run based on the price difference between price offered by the customer and the price set by the station manager (or you if you switch to manual). To stop your trader shipping ecells simply set the price of them to maximum manually and then nobody will buy them. Similarly if you manually set the price of your metal to minimum it will fly out the door.

Note that station traders see ware prices set for the station as floor prices for selling purposes. This does not mean that is the price they actually sell at - they actually sell at the price offered by the customer - but it does mean they work out the profitability of possible deals against this floor price (i.e. they treat that price as unit cost price). Note also that if you set the price of your metal to minimum NPC traders will be queuing up to buy it and they will pay that price. If you don't want them to to buy all your stock on the cheap you have to disable faction trading for that ware.

Arguably you should be able to set the NPC price separately to the station traders floor price, but currently you can't.

[RegisterMe]

Thanks for the comments everybody. Getting my head around X4 is proving to be a frustrating experience.....

Some additional observations:-

The miner I described in 2. in the opening post? I removed it as a subordinate and set it to automine and it worked. In the same system. Which begs a question as to why it didn't work for the station.....?

@Scarecrow - thanks, I'd forgotten you could do that. It did force the station to start trading the refined metals again.

@Kintanar - thanks for the idea. I've never used (or had to use) resource probes before but will now go and sprinkle them about the galaxy.

@Gregorovitch - what you say makes sense, but I am sceptical that it necessarily works that way. Eg the e-cells in the station were set to a sell price of Cr$22. I find it hard to believe that selling four hundred of them could be a better deal than selling six hundred refined metals at Cr$201.

I think my general point about opacity stands. We would all benefit from a straightforward way to interrogate our assets to find out what they were doing and why.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

@Gregorovitch - what you say makes sense, but I am sceptical that it necessarily works that way. Eg the e-cells in the station were set to a sell price of Cr$22. I find it hard to believe that selling four hundred of them could be a better deal than selling six hundred refined metals at Cr$201.

I think my general point about opacity stands. We would all benefit from a straightforward way to interrogate our assets to find out what they were doing and why.

I there anybody buying refined metals for 201cr?
I only find 163cr offers for them (and it's a good price).
The problem is also perhaps there is no customer willing to buy your wares for that price. "Automatic" price is set based on storage levels.

[Gregorovitch]

@Gregorovitch - what you say makes sense, but I am sceptical that it necessarily works that way. Eg the e-cells in the station were set to a sell price of Cr$22. I find it hard to believe that selling four hundred of them could be a better deal than selling six hundred refined metals at Cr$201.

It's not the overall value of the trade that matters. It's the difference between the price paid by the customer and the price the station has set. If the station price for refined metals was 150 and the price a customer was prepared to pay was 151 then the profit is just 1 Cr per unit. Another factor is distance. I believe that the closer a customer is the value of the trade increases since earnings per hour is what matters.

I am pretty sure from experience that if you follow my logic you will find it fixes your problem.

[BrasatoAlBarolo]

I found quite useful flagging energy cells "do not trade with other factions". They have some sort of priority for station-assigned traders because they're very easy to sell very close to any station.
Ships started to load the other wares and easily made more money.