Vanilla - is "Distribute Wares" still a thing?

[RegisterMe]

If it is I can't find it. Can somebody point me in the right direction? Also, is there any documentation for it anywhere?

I've hunted around in-game and googled but not found anything very helpful. Best I've found are some two year old Reddit posts and a video by a "Captain Collins" which are... not comprehensive even if they are still current.

Cheers,


RM

[CBJ]

From 5.00 onwards the name was changed to Fill Shortages, to better reflect what it actually does.

[RegisterMe]

From 5.00 onwards the name was changed to Fill Shortages, to better reflect what it actually does.

Thanks CBJ. I've found it. It requires a 2* pilot, which I don't have, and doesn't seem to do what I want it to do.

I'll see if I can figure something else out.

[grapedog]

From 5.00 onwards the name was changed to Fill Shortages, to better reflect what it actually does.

Thanks CBJ. I've found it. It requires a 2* pilot, which I don't have, and doesn't seem to do what I want it to do.

I'll see if I can figure something else out.

You can get a 2 star piloting easily just by giving the pilot one each of the two super cheap piloting seminars.

[Raevyan]

From 5.00 onwards the name was changed to Fill Shortages, to better reflect what it actually does.

It is pretty bad it though, as it prefers selling small amounts of units if the trade is closer and ignoring full storage trades to stations that stop production because they are lacking the resource.

Example: Sector A has a station that sells Hull Parts. Sector A has multiple buyers for Hull Parts that have almost full storage of hullparts, only buying small amounts. Sector B also has a station that is starving on hullparts.
Now if a „fill shortages“ trader picks up hullparts in sector a, he always prefers sells to stations buying in sector a, even if they only buy small amounts. So he‘s not actually filling shortages of the station in sector b. The issue becomes even more apparent, if you spread out across multiple sectors, which ends up stations further away never receiving any wares from those traders, except if you throw a lot more ships at the problem.

[grapedog]

From 5.00 onwards the name was changed to Fill Shortages, to better reflect what it actually does.

It is pretty bad it though, as it prefers selling small amounts of units if the trade is closer and ignoring full storage trades to stations that stop production because they are lacking the resource.

Example: Sector A has a station that sells Hull Parts. Sector A has multiple buyers for Hull Parts that have almost full storage of hullparts, only buying small amounts. Sector B also has a station that is starving on hullparts.
Now if a „fill shortages“ trader picks up hullparts in sector a, he always prefers sells to stations buying in sector a, even if they only buy small amounts. So he‘s not actually filling shortages of the station in sector b. The issue becomes even more apparent, if you spread out across multiple sectors, which ends up stations further away never receiving any wares from those traders, except if you throw a lot more ships at the problem.

A benefit to this logic though is that more trades means more experience. Personally I only use fill shortages as a low level option to train up pilots to get to the autotrade level. If they're doing more smaller deliveries, they're more likely to earn experience faster than doing longer distance large trades.

[Raevyan]

From 5.00 onwards the name was changed to Fill Shortages, to better reflect what it actually does.

It is pretty bad it though, as it prefers selling small amounts of units if the trade is closer and ignoring full storage trades to stations that stop production because they are lacking the resource.

Example: Sector A has a station that sells Hull Parts. Sector A has multiple buyers for Hull Parts that have almost full storage of hullparts, only buying small amounts. Sector B also has a station that is starving on hullparts.
Now if a „fill shortages“ trader picks up hullparts in sector a, he always prefers sells to stations buying in sector a, even if they only buy small amounts. So he‘s not actually filling shortages of the station in sector b. The issue becomes even more apparent, if you spread out across multiple sectors, which ends up stations further away never receiving any wares from those traders, except if you throw a lot more ships at the problem.

A benefit to this logic though is that more trades means more experience. Personally I only use fill shortages as a low level option to train up pilots to get to the autotrade level. If they're doing more smaller deliveries, they're more likely to earn experience faster than doing longer distance large trades.

I‘ve had hundreds of those running for probably 50-80hozrs and not a single one ever got to 3 stars. I doubt that they even could get to 3 stars using that command.
Also the whole purpose of this command is supposed to fill shortages. Not make 10 unit trades that don’t give xp because it’s ignoring profits.

[Metran]

I've always found it easier to just use the "Repeated Orders" command, while it can only do 1 ware at a time (would be nice to see it increased to 2 or maybe 3, wishful thinking), I find it much more useful than the "Fill shortages" (distribute ware). All of the different behaviours that can be set all have it's Pros and Cons.

[dtpsprt]

..........................

A benefit to this logic though is that more trades means more experience. Personally I only use fill shortages as a low level option to train up pilots to get to the autotrade level. If they're doing more smaller deliveries, they're more likely to earn experience faster than doing longer distance large trades.

There is no benefit if the sales are at a loss and the behaviour does not keep that in mind. They trade either way.

The only "viable" option to get many trades and some experience is by using cheap (or even captured) S traders to do these runs and there should be quite a lot of them.

[TheDeliveryMan]

A benefit to this logic though is that more trades means more experience. Personally I only use fill shortages as a low level option to train up pilots to get to the autotrade level. If they're doing more smaller deliveries, they're more likely to earn experience faster than doing longer distance large trades.

Full loads give more experience than partial loads.

[RegisterMe]

It is frustrating to me that, what, four years after release, the design and management of evolving logistics mechanisms being so central to the game (a good thing) is so poorly served by in game functionality (a bad thing). Things like distance restrictions, and order limitations, feel extremely arbitrary to me. They seem to be there for no reason other than to make the player's life more difficult. As a result I spend more time fighting the game than I do Xenon.

If Egosoft had to have captain and crew experience, have it impact mining speed, unloading speed, trade identification speed etc. Trade / travel range? Number of wares? It's just a bit rubbish imho. Seminars are a bandaid for poorly designed functionality. I shouldn't have to use them in the first place, but given that it seems that I do there should be more than one way of obtaining them (personally I don't like running missions).

Oh well {shrug}, I'm sure they've heard it before.

[Metran]

Seminars are a bandaid for poorly designed functionality. I shouldn't have to use them in the first place, but given that it seems that I do there should be more than one way of obtaining them (personally I don't like running missions).

Here is where and how you can obtain Seminars, ranging from most reliable to least:

• Basic
  1. Traders ("managers") on stations - can be found in the Trader's Corner when taking the transporter from any Docking Module.
  2. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.
  3. Drops - When ships are destroyed they often drop goodies in the form of Crafting, Trade wares and occasionally Seminars.
• 1-Star
  1. Traders ("managers") on stations - can be found in the Trader's Corner when taking the transporter from any Docking Module.
  2. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.
  3. Drops - When ships are destroyed they often drop goodies in the form of Crafting, Trade wares and occasionally Seminars.
• 2-Star
  1. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.
  2. Traders ("managers") on stations [Unreliably] - can be found in the Trader's Corner when taking the transporter from any Docking Module.
• 3 and 4-Star
  1. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.

[GCU Grey Area]

Tend not to use Distribute Wares/Fill Shortages myself. Prefer to build trade stations to fulfill that role instead. At their most basic they're dirt cheap & very quick to build, consisting only of storage, docks & maybe a few defence modules if paranoid, building in a risky sector, or playing as a Split (building unarmed stations in a Split game would just feel wrong).

Trade stations have a number of distinct advantages:
(1) prices can be configured to exclude most low volume trades
(2) makes it considerably easier to configure multiple ships, since new ships will adopt the station's blacklists etc as default as soon as they're assigned
(3) station manager usually defines operational range (rather than the freighter pilots), drastically reducing the need for seminars
(4) avoids having a horde of freighters clogging up the unassigned ships list

[RegisterMe]

Seminars are a bandaid for poorly designed functionality. I shouldn't have to use them in the first place, but given that it seems that I do there should be more than one way of obtaining them (personally I don't like running missions).

Here is where and how you can obtain Seminars, ranging from most reliable to least:

• Basic
  1. Traders ("managers") on stations - can be found in the Trader's Corner when taking the transporter from any Docking Module.
  2. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.
  3. Drops - When ships are destroyed they often drop goodies in the form of Crafting, Trade wares and occasionally Seminars.
• 1-Star
  1. Traders ("managers") on stations - can be found in the Trader's Corner when taking the transporter from any Docking Module.
  2. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.
  3. Drops - When ships are destroyed they often drop goodies in the form of Crafting, Trade wares and occasionally Seminars.
• 2-Star
  1. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.
  2. Traders ("managers") on stations [Unreliably] - can be found in the Trader's Corner when taking the transporter from any Docking Module.
• 3 and 4-Star
  1. Missions - Acquired by visiting stations or having access to the "subdivisions" of a faction, this is achieved by [Mission, Requires +10 Rep with Faction] speaking with a Trade/Opportunity representative.

Thank you, that's useful. Doesn't change the fact that I don't like running missions though .

[RegisterMe]

Tend not to use Distribute Wares/Fill Shortages myself. Prefer to build trade stations to fulfill that role instead. At their most basic they're dirt cheap & very quick to build, consisting only of storage, docks & maybe a few defence modules if paranoid, building in a risky sector, or playing as a Split (building unarmed stations in a Split game would just feel wrong).

Trade stations have a number of distinct advantages:
(1) prices can be configured to exclude most low volume trades
(2) makes it considerably easier to configure multiple ships, since new ships will adopt the station's blacklists etc as default as soon as they're assigned
(3) station manager usually defines operational range (rather than the freighter pilots), drastically reducing the need for seminars
(4) avoids having a horde of freighters clogging up the unassigned ships list

I've done a lot of reading up on "trade stations" over the last few days, what I haven't managed to find is something that is comprehensive and current.

I haven't actually built any yet, but I'd like to be able to plan for them. I think I understand how to get product from my fabs, and npc fabs to trade stations. I think I understand how to sell product from my fabs (even if just relying on npcs to buy it). What I don't understand (vanilla here), is how to reliably and predictably move wares from one of my trade stations to another.

Is it repeat orders? Can you set thresholds with them / "execute contingent on x"? I could probably make it work with this but it's not exactly feature rich...

Any advice gratefully received .

[GCU Grey Area]

I've done a lot of reading up on "trade stations" over the last few days, what I haven't managed to find is something that is comprehensive and current.

I haven't actually built any yet, but I'd like to be able to plan for them. I think I understand how to get product from my fabs, and npc fabs to trade stations. I think I understand how to sell product from my fabs (even if just relying on npcs to buy it). What I don't understand (vanilla here), is how to reliably and predictably move wares from one of my trade stations to another.

Is it repeat orders? Can you set thresholds with them / "execute contingent on x"? I could probably make it work with this but it's not exactly feature rich...

Any advice gratefully received .

I generally use blacklists to manage my internal logistics. I use an 'only my faction' trade blacklist for station freighters used for an internal logistics role (so they can only trade between my stations) & use differential pricing at each station to control the direction in which products flow (e.g. lower selling price at a production station than the buying price at a trade station). Same principle also applies to moving stuff between two trade stations. I'll generally also configure the trade rules for each ware at my trade stations to only accept deliveries from my own ships. I use travel blacklists to control the routes my internal logistics freighters take. Hope that's clear, happy to provide additional details if it would be helpful.

Incidentally, I don't use repeat orders for this because, while in theory it would offer a far greater degree of control, I find the process to configure the orders individually for each ship is quite fiddly & time consuming. Frankly it's just not something I really want to do for a substantial fleet of internal logistics ships.

[RegisterMe]

Thanks for that. iirc somebody developed a similar "directional ring" strategy for keeping stations supplied in X3? I was hoping that there'd be more... let's call it "extant functionality" than having to individually configure prices on each ware, on each station, but hey ho.

I'll work with it. If I get stuck can I pm you?

Thanks,


RM

[GCU Grey Area]

If I get stuck can I pm you?

Yes - happy to help if I can.

[Raevyan]

Tend not to use Distribute Wares/Fill Shortages myself. Prefer to build trade stations to fulfill that role instead. At their most basic they're dirt cheap & very quick to build, consisting only of storage, docks & maybe a few defence modules if paranoid, building in a risky sector, or playing as a Split (building unarmed stations in a Split game would just feel wrong).

Trade stations have a number of distinct advantages:
(1) prices can be configured to exclude most low volume trades
(2) makes it considerably easier to configure multiple ships, since new ships will adopt the station's blacklists etc as default as soon as they're assigned
(3) station manager usually defines operational range (rather than the freighter pilots), drastically reducing the need for seminars
(4) avoids having a horde of freighters clogging up the unassigned ships list

1) For Fill shortages, you specify the ware they are trading. No need to fiddle with prices, as they ignore trying to making profits.
2) Fill shortages works with mimic behavior. Set up once and assign them subs. This also applies to blacklists.
3) Fill shortages has no range limit. It’s not depending on pilot level as there is no limit. You might want to limit it through blacklists though.
4) see 2. does not exactly solve the problem, buts it’s better.

The whole point of distribute wares is to move wares around while being in control what ware they move and not limited by range. With trade stations you run into the problem that your assigned L freighters move half empty because they only pick up what they trade for or move a low volume ware.
Again the biggest downside of distribute wares or fill shortages is the fact, that they might end up selling in a loop when they trade wares to consumers spread across multiple sectors. Some might never get wares, despite halting production while others will sit at full storage levels just because they were closer.

PS: Yes i wish we could assign wares and buyer/seller settings for station assigned ships to not have L freighters move 500 units of foodstuff around.

[Raevyan]

Thanks for that. iirc somebody developed a similar "directional ring" strategy for keeping stations supplied in X3? I was hoping that there'd be more... let's call it "extant functionality" than having to individually configure prices on each ware, on each station, but hey ho.

I'll work with it. If I get stuck can I pm you?

Thanks,


RM

To be honest, you‘ll be fine with just station traders and auto pricing. Auto pricing is based on storage levels so you might want to rethink if you want to slap on 3 L storages. But it should balance deliveries in an isolated player economy just fine. The only thing you have to keep in mind is that station trades have a range limit depending on the managers Star level and the max range they got is 5 jumps.

Trade stations are only needed if you need to export wares to stations that are further than 5 jumps away or if you want to sell some wares from your isolated player economy to NPC (selling overproduction). The latter would require minimal and manual price fiddling at the trade station (e.g. buy price to 1 below average) to only buy up your access supply.


PS: the thing you are referring to X3:TC which totally dominates the markets isn’t really possible in X4. It’s also way more complicated than it needs to be.