[Bonus Plugin] Station Manager

[Seismic_Edge]

In order for your traders to be able to see the ware prices within a sector, you must have a satellite, ship, or station in the sector to be scanned (this is shown by a green border around the sector in the galaxy map). Your ships will not visit sectors where they cannot see the ware prices. You can use this to your advantage. If you don't want traders to visit sectors because you think they might not be safe, do not put any satellites, ships, or stations in those sectors, and your traders will not look for stations to trade at within them.


I just found out the hard way that this does not work if your ships are parked/docked in that sector. The sector still shows green on the galaxy map, but the automated station needs a satellite or ship in the open to be able to scan the factories.

And here I thought I was being smart to buy light discos and have them all dock one in each sector. Thank goodness I only did that in 4 sectors where I was particularly concerned about haveing stupid pirates come and destroy them. Perhaps if I have the satellites dropped off high or low in the sector?

[Jakesnake5]

Adv Sats parked at +/- 40-50km in the system will do 2 things:

a) give SM an 'eye' on ware prices, and
b) keep up to date the sectors 'active' (read exhisting) stations.

Plus, at +/-50km, it would be rare that anything would attack the sat.

Separate jump distances are set for individual freighters in the 'Additional Command' console for each freighter, similar to prohibiting them from trading wares.

[Steve J.]

I can't get the Station Manager that came with the 1.3.02 Bonus Pack to work. I had no prior non-standard scripts running - just a vanilla game with the plot complete.

I can turn on Station Manager in the complex's script menu. Then when I try to add a ship, either by selecting a single ship or the complex to add all of them, nothing happens and the Station Manager: Automate line disappears from the command console list. At that point, all ships from the complex are set to do nothing.

I can reactivate the Station Manager, but no ships are automated (the Remove Ship line is grayed out and all the ships are still set to command "None").

Is there some way to turn on logging so I can figure out what the script doesn't like? It seems to be failing sillently.

I had a UT at the station, but halted it and ordered it to dock before trying the Station Manager, but no change.

Any suggestions?

[D_Zorro]

Have you first try to add the command automate factory in your console of your factory ?? After that use another console command, and use add ship to station and select the ship and you set to go.

[Jakesnake5]

Do not use the same station command slot to add a ship, it'll override the Station Automate command. Just choose an empty slot to use the 'Add Ship' command.

[Steve J.]

Do not use the same station command slot to add a ship, it'll override the Station Automate command. Just choose an empty slot to use the 'Add Ship' command.

Thank you very much! That sounds like my problem! Will give it a go.

[Steve J.]

Thanks for the help. I'm now able to use Station Manager and it works well.

Seems like a nice script and is reducing the number of blinking stations I had. I wonder if I can now get by with fewer ships per station? Will experiment, but I'd think so...

[Ruut]

Where and what command i have to type to allow my ship under Station manager to use their jump drives or to get levels ?
I think a link to a notice will be great.
When i look to define parameters on my station manager i have no choice just some things to write but what ?

[Geggo]

Where and what command i have to type to allow my ship under Station manager to use their jump drives or to get levels ?
I think a link to a notice will be great.
When i look to define parameters on my station manager i have no choice just some things to write but what ?

Station Manager does NOT utilize jump drive, if you want that cabability then you need to check Commercial Agent or Commodity Logistics.

Nor does it have any levels.

No Parameters either, you can ONLY select what wares it's allowd to trade in. (it automaticly decides what to buy and what to sell, based on resource/product status, not sure it does anything with intermediates.)

[jlehtone]

I think I see the activation command for Station Manager in my Trading Stations. I thought SM was not supposed to work on Docks?

[mikeys124]

I have been using station manager 1.11 for quite a while, and it seemed to work excellently. However, I recently upgraded to the bonus pack (stopped all ships, stopped SM, removed old SM script, installed bonus pack, restarted SM and ships) But now they are behaving very strangely. All ships will trade all of my intermediate resources whether I have intermediate trading set to "none" or not. The only way to stop this is buy manually limiting which products they can trade, which should be okay. However, this gets more complex. For example, I have one complex selling Ecells, Cahoonas and space fuel, a second selling cahoonas and a third rimes fact, all in neighbouring sectors. Both complexes are set to sell cahoonas at 72, and their ships keep selling cahoonas to each other, when in both, they are set as a product (I use a script, Complex Manager to manually set products) and are not a resource. On top of this, traders from the rimes fact keep buing up the first complexes wheat, so it doesn't have any to make space fuel.

I have tried stopping and re-starting SM, to no avail, and now think that maybe something went wrong when I switched the scripts. However, uninstalling the bonus pack and revertign back to SM 1.11 doesn't resolve this either. Any thoughts on what is going on?

[jlehtone]

I just had to try. Activated the SM on a Trading Station. Accidentally added all ships. Off they went, selling commodities. One of them merrily headed for my closed loop. When I say closed, I intend to keep it that way. And a ship ignoring "Intermediates: none" will not stay in active service. The Commercial Agent ship has a flag to prevent trade with other player stations.

In principle, CAG buyer and SM salesman would make a wonderful Trading Station, in some situations.

[kab]

I'm having trouble getting AStar to work. No matter what I set the FOE and NEUTRAL to in the custom stats my freaking SM Mercuries STILL insist on going through Farnham's Legend to get to Atreus Clouds. Why is it with FOE set to 10000 they still try and go through Farnham's?

[Jakesnake5]

1) where is the station their assigned to
2) do you have a ship or sat in Farnhams?

[jlehtone]

The SM can apparently sell to EQdocks that do not stock ware. There is the original thread. CLS had this feature and it was 'fixed'.

[Graxster]

Seems odd to me that both Station Manager and Commercial Agent were included in the Bonus pack, since they seem to do the exact same thing, with the exception that Commercial Agents will supposedly use jump drives. Which is better to use, or which should be used? I haven't been turning Station Manager on, because I've been assigning my ships a homebase and selecting "Start commercial representation" (CAgent) from that Trade menu. Don't they both do the exact same thing almost? Oh, also CAgent has that "promotions" thing, where they get better and better, and their titles change.

[jlehtone]

There are subtle differences. Less now with 3.1.04.

You pay 20k for the SM, once. Any number of ships. You pay 2400 credits for each hour the CAG ships fly. So after 10 flown hours, SM is cheaper.

CAG must level up. The initial pilot can very little. SM ships can do everything from the word go.

SM had separate jump-range for each ship and only traded in sectors with satellites. CAG did not have those in the beginning.

[Graxster]

OK, thought I'd give this a try by itself and see how good it works (using latest patched game with Bonus Pack), I selected "Station Manager Automate" from the Command menu, then "Station Manager Add Ship". All went well and I saw my ship moving to dock with the factory. But as for all those other commands (Set Jumprange, Prohibit Wares, etc), they're nowhere to be found, just add or remove ship. Where can I find those, or is something wrong?

EDIT: Well, answer the above if you can, but I think I'm going to have to go back to using CAG or whatever you call it. I just read the part where if you're using Station Manager, your Traders will only go to sectors where you have assets (so they can see prices from Universe Map or whatever). This is obviously not good for players just starting out with their first factory, as it's impossible to have assets in all the surrounding 9 or so sectors that this factory buys/sells to. On the other hand, using CAG, just before I turned it off, I witnessed my trader use his jumpdrive to hop over 2 sectors over, pick up energy cells at 12cr, jumpdrive back and drop them off. SM may cost less per hour, but it's not very cost efficient.

[Ruut]

You can manage Station manager on each ship individually in using the inactive ship slot.

Station manager work on each sector you have a satellite or a ship.
Station manager is the best at low and high development level.
Best at low, because it cost almost nothing.
Best at high, level because it has no upkeep.

CAG cost is really seen when your fleet is more than 30 TS CAG.

[Jakesnake5]

The station commands allow adding and removing of ships, even getting a report of the ships the station has (use Add Ship and target the station itself).

To use the Prohibit Ware or change Jumprange, you must use the SHIPS additional command list.