amirite wrote:Just curious, could someone give me a good example of where this would be used? I've got EST for Universe Trading, and CLS to manage resource fetching/selling... to me these two seem to cover all the bases (love them both btw).
Stock Trade Mk1, Mk2, Mk3, as well as CAG, CLS, and EST all haul wares from one station to another. Their difference is on how much you can or must affect what they haul and where they haul.
Lets take the stock Trade Mk1/2 (Best buy / Best sell). The ships serves its homebase. But it can haul only one ware, and it cannot both buy and sell. Thus, a Crystal Fab would need four such ships to "cover all bases". Furthermore, you cannot specify accurately whom they trade with, as they go for "best offer".
CAG does the same. It serves its homebase. It does go for "best offer" too, but you have more ways to tell it avoid "problematic" clients (like a sector next door invaded by Kha'ak). And it jumps better than stock scripts (which have logical bugs). You can even tell a CAG working for station in Argon Prime to trade only with stations in Getsu Fune. But the most direct benefit of CAG is that it will trade all wares of its homebase, and will both buy and sell. One ship to serve one station is enough. And you can configure it to do a trade run only when it is absolutely necessary. A ship in space is a ship in danger. The less exposure the better.
Sure, you can set EST to trade in specific area. But it is more difficult to make it serve one specific player station. EST is a configurable implementation of the idea used also in stock Trade Mk3 Local/Universal Trader. But the stock script is said to be buggy, and EST would probably outperform it even if it wasn't.
Lack of control of UT has created many modified versions of UT, but EST is not one of them. It is clearly a different implementation, "done right".
Internal Commodity Logistics (CLS1) is for hauling between player stations. It is not about trading. It is very handy, if you cannot join your stations into one complex (like when the station is a Dock, a TL, or in different sector. You could use the trading scripts to achieve similar results, but CLS1 is much more to the point, without uncertainty. And CLS1 runs only when necessary. It is the initial implementation of "truly closed loop", from era before complexes.
External Commodity Logistics (CLS2) is closer to EST/Local Trader. It can do internal logistics too. You could even configure it to serve one player station, But the main problem is that you have to configure it. You do set up a route, one way or other, and CLS2 will follow that route. Thus, it does not use "best offers", or run "only if necessary". And a ship serving specific player station has to do that, like CAG does. While less flexible, it can do very specific tasks where others fail.
