[TC] Automating the Hub missions

thewhiteausie · Post by **thewhiteausie** » Sun, 22. Aug 10, 14:24

I was just wondering if anyone sets up automatic supply runs for the hub missions. I've been trying for a while to automate a TS to ferry in goods, but it never seems to unload anything. I've tried using manual trade runs, and have just spent the past hour trying to use CLS (Logistician pilot).

Can this be done? If so what configurations do I need?

Chris0132 · Post by **Chris0132** » Sun, 22. Aug 10, 14:38

Homebase to the hub, buy at best price.

If you want to ship it from a supply complex as well, you can I think set your supply complex to sell the good very cheap and disable trade with other races, I think your hub buying freighter will still dock and buy from it, but it will also go for any other factories selling the ware cheaply as well, so consider setting your supply factory slightly above the lowest asking price, that way your ship will buy from other factories as soon as they fill up, but then will go back to your supply factory, should fill the requirements faster.

Laden Swallow · Post by **Laden Swallow** » Sun, 22. Aug 10, 14:59

Few simple checks first to make sure we aren't missing the obvious:

1) Does the hub have the appropriate good(s) listed in its trade menu. If not you would need to add the ware using either the dockware manager (never used personally - included in the bonus pack), or by manually transferring at least one of the required ware to the station in the first place.

2) Does the hub have funds to buy wares if you are using commands (other than perhaps the CLS2 package) such as 'buy ware for best price'

3) What are the settings you have used if using one of the bonus pack commands...

thewhiteausie · Post by **thewhiteausie** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 00:23

Actually I was missing the obvious... It's simple,

1) Load ware - station

2) Unload ware - the hub.

using CLS1.

Thanks for the replies though.

Da-V-Man · Post by **Da-V-Man** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 09:21

I use CAGs homebased at the hub with a full 50 sector range and a jump drive. They work very well, and it is much better than using CLS unless you are supplying from one specific complex or factory. I just make sure they buy only the one ware currently required, however it might be more sensible to just use the MK2 command "buy ware for best price," as you don't have to pay an hourly wage. Also, when homebased at the hub, make sure that you give the Hub enough money. I give it chunks of credits in 5 mil bundles, and refil when necessary.

I also have a dedicated CAG buying e-cells for the hub so that they will auto refill when they dock to drop off the goods. The e-cells are also used for refueling my TLs (only have 2 currently), and my personal Panther flagship when they're low.

Laden Swallow · Post by **Laden Swallow** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 09:40

Da-V-Man wrote:I use CAGs homebased at the hub with a full 50 sector range and a jump drive. They work very well, and it is much better than using CLS unless you are supplying from one specific complex or factory. I just make sure they buy only the one ware currently required, however it might be more sensible to just use the MK2 command "buy ware for best price," as you don't have to pay an hourly wage. Also, when homebased at the hub, make sure that you give the Hub enough money. I give it chunks of credits in 5 mil bundles, and refil when necessary.

I also have a dedicated CAG buying e-cells for the hub so that they will auto refill when they dock to drop off the goods. The e-cells are also used for refueling my TLs (only have 2 currently), and my personal Panther flagship when they're low.

If you use multiple freighters with buy ware for best price, it is highly likely that eventually they will synchronise and end up all flying(/jumping) to the same station, one gets the deal, the rest flying(/jumping) to the next best deal etc. until they all run out of fuel bar the few that have managed to jump to a factory and back to base.

EDIT: Bold for emphasis

Da-V-Man · Post by **Da-V-Man** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 11:11

Really? As far as I know, CAGs are supposed to "communicate" with each other, so that shouldn't happen with them. I've never noticed them synchronize like that so far (CAGs I mean).

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 12:21

Actually with best buyers, if they go to the same factory and one gets there first. They all go back to base before going out again. Usually to the same factory again, and they end up in a retarded lockstep with all your freighters jumping to a factory then jumping back again with only one of them actually flying any goods. If the empty ones went on to other factories it might not get so bad.
And this is why CAG is good. Its good for other reasons too but thats the main one for me. They avoid each others destonations.

Beergoggles · Post by **Beergoggles** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 13:01

I'm on the Ore part of the Hub Missions

1. I have (4) Ore Mine L Complexes that yield 64+ Ore per roid scatteded around the universe. The complexes have 2-3 ore roides connected (there are a few sectors that the high yield ore roides right next to each other). I set the Ore Sell Price to 50 and Not allow other NPC's to trade.

2. I made one delivery of ore from my Hyperion to the Hub so it "got primed"

3. I gave the Hub 10,000,000 credits.

4. I bought (3) Mistrals (they are nice cause u can buy them from OTAS with Jumnpdrives) for each Oreplex which are "Homebased to the Oreplex"

a. One TS Buys E Cells from my SSP XL @ 13 credits
b. The other two TS Commands are "Trade...,, Sell Ware ..." to The Hub using Mk2 Trade software.
c. I set the Trade Runs to 250

5. I set the Ore Selling TS's to Autojump and Fuel Resupply to 50 (this gives them 500 energy cells that they pull from the Ore Complex).

6. Every 3-4 Hours I have to give the Hub 10,000,000 credits again as they are pocketed back into My Soloar Power Plant XL...

Its one big happy family!

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 13:55

Few points beergoggles.

If you use CLS to deliver ore from your complexes you dont have to transfer credits. Its load/unload instead of buy/sell so there's no credit transfer.

If you are going to use mk2, if you put in -1 repeats it'll keep going indefinately.

Generally, if you use a freighter to stock the Hub with energy from your complexes. All your traders can refuel from there (Mk2s, CAGs and CLSs). And you also have a nice stock for moving gates.

And finally if you homebase all your Mk3 traders to the Hub all their profits will go into the hub. Meaning you have to top the credits up less often. In adition, if you have complexes selling products, ship them to the hub then sell from there for the same reason.
Despite having many CAGs buying goods for the plot I never have to top the hubs funds up from doing this, infact I have set it to transfer credits to my account when its at 20mill and its usually at that.

Beergoggles · Post by **Beergoggles** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 21:31

Im feeling Noobish

CLS=???
CAG=???

Da-V-Man · Post by **Da-V-Man** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 21:41

CLS is the Commodity Logistics Software.

CAG is the Commercial Agent. They are both scripts found in the bonus pack.

StarTroll · Post by **StarTroll** » Mon, 23. Aug 10, 22:19

In case you might feel it cionfusing, CLS has 2 meaning. In this case it means Commodity Logistics Software, but it also means Cargo Life Support System. Its not hard to know which one is spoken of, depending on the topic.

Post by **Nanook** » Tue, 24. Aug 10, 01:22

Infekted wrote:Actually with best buyers, if they go to the same factory and one gets there first. They all go back to base before going out again....

Nope. Not in TC, they don't. I had four buying teladianium for my Hub, until I could get some CAG's trained up. I watched them for a while and noticed that they did not return home (which would've been preferable, since they'd get out of sync and not run out of jump energy). What would usually happen is one would get there first, get the goods and fly home. Meanwhile, the others would arrive, find nothing, search around, and generally all jump to the same next station. If this happened again, quite often the remaining two would run out of jump energy and try to fly to the next station the long way. So I concluded that two max for each ware was optimum, until I could get the CAG's going.

Beergoggles wrote:Im feeling Noobish

CLS=???
CAG=???

See my sig.

Oh, and I try to use CBLS for the Cargo Bay Life Support, or alternately, CLSS for Cargo Life Support System, to distinguish from the Commodity Logistics Software, which generally has a 1 or 2 at the end to denote which version.

jaws104 · Post by **jaws104** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 01:10

I can't figure out how to automate transfer of surplus crystals from my complex to the Hub.

If i set it up with CLS it will deplete all of my plex crystal stock - complex grinds to a halt

If i set it up with CAG i can tell it to only take crystals from the plex when plex fills to a certain percentage - but then it will try and sell them to npc stations....

Darkwolf_187 · Post by **Darkwolf_187** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 01:42

jaws104 wrote:If i set it up with CLS it will deplete all of my plex crystal stock - complex grinds to a halt

Unfortunately CLS1 and 2 is a bit stupid when it comes to the hub plot. The reason is that the hub is always at 0 stock, so it looks like it's desperately short on resources and CLS will prioritize it to receive crystals every time.

You can resolve this by setting up a CLS2 to move crystals. Then adjust the amount it moves per run until you aren't depleting your stockpile.

Or just establish a massive oversupply of crystals and don't worry about it, and also use a handful of CAGs to roam around the universe buying up crystals. That's what I did.

Twest09 · Post by **Twest09** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 02:15

jaws104 wrote:
If i set it up with CAG i can tell it to only take crystals from the plex when plex fills to a certain percentage - but then it will try and sell them to npc stations....

You can set the Trader settings in the CAG command menu to only buy resources, products, intermediate products.

I have 20 CAGs set to homebase at the Hub. 8 are gathering miscellaneous required goods, 10 are buying Chips, and 2 are buying E-Cells to fuel the operation. I have a MMB (Mobile Mining Base (TL)) set near the Hub as a warehouse for the Chips and I have one CLS pilot with two waypoints, #1 Hub - Load Chips, #2 MMB - Unload Chips. Those will reverse once I get to the point that I need to transfer chips back to the Hub.

That has worked pretty good so far and I am at 35000 chips of the 75000 and I gathered them rather quickly... I was insanely surprised at how effective this setup would be. I didn't really want to build a chip plex that would be useless after the plot... the last time I did this I remember that I was having a very hard time getting the chips sold.

synik · Post by **synik** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 17:23

I set up a Silicon plex in Barren Shores with, from memory, about 25 Silicon Mine L and enough XL SPP loops to keep it running, then I had half a dozen Mistral Super Freighters running External Logistics ferrying wafers to the hub. I connected the hub to a gate in Barren Shores so that no Jump fuel was used and tried to set the CLS up so that it didn't take all of the Silicon.

I failed at the last part, but the hub didn't often go flashy, and even then only because one of the crystal fabs was out of Silicon, briefly, from time to time.

Last night I started the Microchip delivery. Having lurked here for a while, I already had a 25-Chip-Plant plex in Spring of Belief, again with SPP XL loops to keep it stocked with e-cells, and a stock of about 20,000 all ready to go in several Mistral SFs, I was thinking I was doing quite well.

Jumped four Mistrals to the hub, first one had just over 6,000 Microchips on board, arrow down to the chips, hit Home...

250 Microchips Transferred.

Home, Enter, listen to Norah's "Microchips Transferred" confirmation, count two seconds, repeat. And again. And again and again and again and again... forty-five minutes later and I've finally delivered the stockpile of Microchips.

Someone at Egosoft has a LOT to answer for...

I'll be seting those "warehouse" MSF's to home to the hub and buy ware for best price from this point forwards, but even so....

Infekted · Post by **Infekted** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 17:29

In that situation CLS is your friend.

CLS2, one waypoint: Unload Microchips, max cargo.

It'll happily sit there unloading them all for you

If you have a TL docked at the hub, with that waypoint programmed in. If you order all the rest of your ships to unload to the TL, it'll feed them all into the hub no worries.

synik · Post by **synik** » Mon, 27. Sep 10, 18:27

Cool, thanks. I'll give that a go.

Actually, having unloaded the stock I've pre-made, I was actually thinking that a small fleet of M4s ought to be more than enough to take 100 Microchips per 25 minutes on a one-gate trip, and I've got several Solanos lying idle since I finished the Terran plot and replaced all my docked fighters with Spitfyres...

Then again, one of those spitfyres might be an even better bet.

egosoft.com

egosoft.com

[TC] Automating the Hub missions

Automating the Hub missions