Question about selling e-cells with jump-capable CLS2

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Question about selling e-cells with jump-capable CLS2

Post by bbn » Thu, 26. Oct 17, 12:02

Hi,

Inspired by Tim's guide on CLS I started to build my own CSL-based trading empire. Right now I capture all SPPs in Argon Prime region and my company HQ in Herron's Nebula is full and my sellers keeps the AP region happy in energy. I wanted to sell superfluous e-cells outside AP region using CLS2* jump capable pilot.

* Why CLS and not CAG seller? First, CAG can sell only products, so I would need to build SPP in my HQ, which is expensive. Second, CAG routine is not efficient (in terms of fuel consumption and speed of deliveries... so profit margins are lower). CAG pilots loads up only enough produce for selling in one factory, sells it and go back for another round. So for long range traders it works like that: refuel, load up product, jump somewhere, sell product to 1 factory, jump to home base, repeat. On the other, CLS2 can first stop refuel and load up the product, jump somewhere, sell to multiple factories in a given sector, jump to close by sector, sell some more, repeat till he has something for selling in cargo hold. I did some experiments with galaxy-wide ore selling and my theory was confirmed: CLS2 had almost 2x profit/hour than CAG (both were using Mistral SF, fully expanded cargo hold).

Basic approach is (which work for other goods) to set-up the seller is to:
1. First waypoint: fly to home base, unload all, refuel, load e-cells (max cargo bay)
2. Generate waypoints, sell e-cells, range 100, price 18, max cargo space.

The problem I'm having is that the pilot is selling all his e-cells and doesn't have any fuel for return jump to HQ. Is there any way to prevent him from selling all of his e-cells?

Right now I'm thinking about 2 solutions:
1. Adding SPP to the complex and using CAG instead of CLS.
2. Alerting manually generated waypoints so that after each sell (sell up to instead of max cargobay) he returns for fuel.

Both of those don't satisfy me much. First one is less efficient than CLS and SPPs are expensive. The second one – basically changes my CLS to (dumber) CAG and requires lots of work for setting it up.

Any alternative ideas?

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Post by RAVEN.myst » Thu, 26. Oct 17, 13:11

I've had the same problem as you, before. Are you using the "Refuel jump energy" waypoint command? I find thatif placed correctly this does the trick. In my current game, I have jumpdrive-enabled CLS2s both buying and selling ECs (I just started this game, so it's the ONLY ware I'm trading at the moment), and it's working fine. I find that the sequencing of the waypoints is important, though: for my "collectors", I tell them to unload at the depot, and then refuel (2 command entries at same location); for the outbound sellers, I tell them to FIRST refuel, then load up with ECells - that way, the script tracks the amount that it loaded as the amount to sell off - at least, I assume that's what's happening, as it works for me.

However, be aware that I've found that it takes at least one cycle (perhaps even two) for the CLS2 script to stabilize - so after you start the command, there's every chance that it will sell off its fuel tank at its first customer; then, after it ends that run and starts a new cycle, things reset and it *should* come right. Also note: this happens every time you stop and/or restart the command, so once it's running smoothly, you kinda need to keep your hands off it :D (However, as far as I can tell, adding waypoints and tweaking other internal setting *should* be fine most of the time - just avoid restarting the CLS2 command.) Keep this "first run refuel failure" in mind when you test your routes - the first run-through is not representative, as you want the itinerary to reset.

Another caveat: I'm not sure about this, but there may be inconsistencies in refuelling when you base your CLS2 at a station/plex/dock that doesn't treat ECs as a product (I seem to recall having a reliability issue in such situations before, but not clearly enough to be able to say anything for sure.)
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Post by bbn » Thu, 26. Oct 17, 13:29

Thanks for the answer! (it constantly amazes me the friendliness of people on this forum!)
RAVEN.myst wrote:I've had the same problem as you, before. Are you using the "Refuel jump energy" waypoint command? I find thatif placed correctly this does the trick. In my current game, I have jumpdrive-enabled CLS2s both buying and selling ECs (I just started this game, so it's the ONLY ware I'm trading at the moment), and it's working fine. I find that the sequencing of the waypoints is important, though: for my "collectors", I tell them to unload at the depot, and then refuel (2 command entries at same location); for the outbound sellers, I tell them to FIRST refuel, then load up with ECells - that way, the script tracks the amount that it loaded as the amount to sell off - at least, I assume that's what's happening, as it works for me.
Yup, explicit refuel (not load e-cells, just refuel) is the first waypoint. Actually, first waypoint is a combination of: fly to station, unload everything, refuel jump energy, load e-cells max cargo hold.
RAVEN.myst wrote:However, be aware that I've found that it takes at least one cycle (perhaps even two) for the CLS2 script to stabilize - so after you start the command, there's every chance that it will sell off its fuel tank at its first customer; then, after it ends that run and starts a new cycle, things reset and it *should* come right. Also note: this happens every time you stop and/or restart the command, so once it's running smoothly, you kinda need to keep your hands off it :D (However, as far as I can tell, adding waypoints and tweaking other internal setting *should* be fine most of the time - just avoid restarting the CLS2 command.) Keep this "first run refuel failure" in mind when you test your routes - the first run-through is not representative, as you want the itinerary to reset.
Ah! That might be it! At first I tested this approach with ore and it worked like a charm even in first run-through. I tried to apply it to e-cells the same way and stopped it just after the CLS sold its all energy cells at the first stop... I'll see what will happen on second run-through. Need to modify my way points though, as I started selling very far away from home base of Herron's Nebula :wink: .
RAVEN.myst wrote:Another caveat: I'm not sure about this, but there may be inconsistencies in refuelling when you base your CLS2 at a station/plex/dock that doesn't treat ECs as a product (I seem to recall having a reliability issue in such situations before, but not clearly enough to be able to say anything for sure.)


That is what I'm trying to avoid - i.e., building SPP as this is waste of money in my opinion for this task. I have the cr right now, but I'm saving for my first TL. And you know, Mammoths are not cheap - and no, true Argon patriots don't buy ships and stations from other races :wink: :wink:

I'll test it in the evening and let you know if I encounter the same issues as you did.

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Post by RAVEN.myst » Thu, 26. Oct 17, 15:27

bbn wrote:it constantly amazes me the friendliness of people on this forum!
We try :)
bbn wrote: Ah! That might be it! At first I tested this approach with ore and it worked like a charm even in first run-through. I tried to apply it to e-cells the same way and stopped it just after the CLS sold its all energy cells at the first stop...
Yup - given how the jumpdrive doesn't drink ore, there's no issue there, naturally - the script still hasn't "reset" so to speak, but functionally it has little to no effect (it may affect the order in which the destinations are parsed on the first pass, but I think that's about it.)
bbn wrote:... and no, true Argon patriots don't buy ships and stations from other races :wink: :wink:
I set the same restriction on myself - I use the hardware of the race I'm playing, nothing more and nothing less (though if I play as Terran and want the option of boarding, I accept that I have to acquire some Argon marines and capture me an Argon M7M - humans, and built for humans, respectively, at least...)
bbn wrote:I'll test it in the evening and let you know if I encounter the same issues as you did.
Best of luck! I hope it works out (and not *only* because I'll look a right tit if it doesn't :P heheh)

Happy hunting! :)
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Thu, 26. Oct 17, 18:30

CLS has a very hard time refueling from stations. Sometimes it works okay if the station is their homeport, and it is definitely complicated by having e-cells as cargo, but I never fully sorted out the problems because I found a workaround that is reliable and just stopped messing with it.

What I do is provide a fuel tank to be used as the refueling waypoint. Just stick some banged up freighter on your HQ with a single waypoint;

HQ, e-cells, load max cargo

So, the tank will always be full.

Then your selling ships need to start with this sequence:

HQ, e-cells, unload max cargo
Fuel Tank, reload jump fuel,
HQ, e-cells, load ...

Since I started doing that I haven't had any problems, so I stopped trying to figure them out.

Notice that this also works for turning a military outpost into a center for your trading networks when you don't have a station of your own. In my current game the Black Hole Sun Bakery Cooperative uses a big abandoned Demeter at the Military Outpost as a combination fuel tank and transfer point.

Instead of max cargo the dock buys up to 500 e-cells that all the traders use for jump fuel. Buyers reload the dock with beef and wheat, which is distributed to the five local bakeries by low level CLS pilots. Energy haulers keep the outpost filled as a first priority, provide for the bakeries as a second priority, provide for regional wheat farms and cattle ranches as a third priority, and then sell to cahoona consumers if all other priorities are met. Another low level CLS gathers the cahoonas into the trading station so jumping sellers can feed the region.

No stations to defend, and when the inevitable hoard of Xenon passes through all the CLS ships just duck and cover. It makes several million credits per day.
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Post by bbn » Fri, 27. Oct 17, 19:09

So after experimenting a bit I found out that combining the information from both of you works the best: using additional fuel tank and giving a CLS trader one round to set-up. Interestingly, with fuel tank it seems that most of the time it works from the beginning.

@Raven, I experimented with getting the fuel from the complex without SPP and it is not reliable for me also. I observed that when CLS is refueling from home base it works most of the time, but not at all when I was trying to refuel from another station (which works as a overflow tank for main company HQ).

As for the race-only restriction... I copied that idea from you :oops: :D

@Tim, how do you manage your freighters in case of not having a homebase assigned? The idea is interesting but I am worried about cluttering my property list with CLS traders...

-----
The bottom line is this: my jumpdrive-equipped CLS2 pilots work! Thank you Raven and Tim! I did a test (leaving the game for a night with a SETA turned on) and profits for both Argon Energy Subsidiary (AES) and Argon Mineral Magnate Ltd. (AMM) :D skyrocketed. 30M cr+ on each account - which is quite good results considering that I didn't optimize fuel flow from AES to overflow tanks and fuel tanks at all yet (so the CLS traders run out of it at some point 8) )

I have additional questions about this set-up.

1. What happens when I change waypoints for CLS trader mid-flight (without re-issuing Start External Commodity Logistic command)? Do the CLS2 pilots use the new route after finishing one loop or is it ignored? What I would like to do is to extend the list of stations as I uncover more sectors without needing to manage the pilot (catching him manually with empty cargo hold or selling/unloading what he has currently in the cargo).

2. Is there a way of limiting 'generate waypoints' by races? Of course I can edit the list manually, but this takes lot's of time when setting up multiple traders... I want to cover whole galaxy, but skip those pesky Parandits, as I don't won't to aid the economy of my enemies :evil:

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Post by Timsup2nothin » Fri, 27. Oct 17, 19:39

bbn wrote: @Tim, how do you manage your freighters in case of not having a homebase assigned? The idea is interesting but I am worried about cluttering my property list with CLS traders...
As an example, all the traders in my aforementioned BHS Bakery Co-Op are assigned to a Magnetar as a homebase, so they don't show on my property list. The Magnetar is named, conveniently, BHS Bakery Co-Op HQ, and whenever I want to see how things are going I just look at it and open "owned ships." It's also loaded with fighters and will serve as my rapid response force in BHS, and has a low level CLS pilot tasked with buying tech goods from the fabs in BHS if they get too cheap to pass up.
bbn wrote: 1. What happens when I change waypoints for CLS trader mid-flight (without re-issuing Start External Commodity Logistic command)? Do the CLS2 pilots use the new route after finishing one loop or is it ignored? What I would like to do is to extend the list of stations as I uncover more sectors without needing to manage the pilot (catching him manually with empty cargo hold or selling/unloading what he has currently in the cargo).
They will continue through the current loop, then change when the waypoint list restarts. If you want them to change immediately hit the "start CLS" option, but that will be a cold restart at the beginning of your new list. For the situation you described, adding new customers to the end of the list, just adding them and letting the guy finish his current loop shouldn't cause any problems.
bbn wrote: 2. Is there a way of limiting 'generate waypoints' by races? Of course I can edit the list manually, but this takes lot's of time when setting up multiple traders... I want to cover whole galaxy, but skip those pesky Parandits, as I don't won't to aid the economy of my enemies :evil:
Well, my first answer is "don't do that." Hitting generate waypoints in some "whole galaxy" fashion will almost always produce a waypoint list that is too long for the ship to manage anyway. What I mean is that if you are working with a ship to sell, say, ore, the customers at the end of the list will never get served because the ship will always sell out before it gets that far. I use regional distributors and I still find that it is very easy to overload a ship and have under served customers down towards the bottom of the list if I try to service too many sectors with each ship.

Second answer is, no, generate waypoints is a machete, not a scalpel. You'll always have to do some manual pruning for the kind of specific applications an active enemy race creates. That's part of the reason having an active enemy increases the challenges.

------------------------------------------------------------------

All very good questions, by the way. Keep on keeping on, and welcome to the X universe.
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Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Post by RAVEN.myst » Sat, 28. Oct 17, 11:44

bbn wrote: As for the race-only restriction... I copied that idea from you
:) :thumb_up:

Tim already answered your other questions fully. I have only one detail to add, in case it is or becomes relevant: early in my days using CLS2, I thought of brute-forcing them by using and sharing long itineraries, and letting them sort themselves out - basically, I hoped they might emulate CAGs' ability to coordinate amongst themselves - well, that doesn't work. What ended up happening is that multiple freighters would end up syncing up in an undesirable way: the first few customers would all be stocked up, for example, so several CLS2s running the same route would end up flying in almost a convoy, all heading for the next customer, and tripping over each other, as it were. Here's an example:

Three CLS2s (let's call them A, B, and C) all head to the same client-1. A gets there, sells, driving down the offered price, and heads home. B arrives, and finds that this client is no longer paying enough, so moves on to the next client-2; the same happens for C, and in the meantime A has returned home (I usually place my supplies near to gates, to keep the return trip as quick as possible), and is now also heading to client-2 (assuming no other clients earlier in the list are now hungry.) At client-2, the situation repeats, with B satisfying the demand, and C and then A arriving after only to move on... So you have this gang of CLS2s all following the same route [serial] instead of spreading out and selling simultaneously [parallel] (thereby also giving NPC traders more time to serve your would-be customers, stealing your business) - this is extremely time-inefficient, slowing your turnover and therefore your profitability. (And, of course, as Tim already pointed out, if the list is too long, then at some point the earlier clients have consumed enough to be buying again, and the whole gang goes back to the beginning.) You'd think that after some time, the "gang" would break up as the demand goes out of sync, but oddly enough (well, not really odd - it's just not necessarily intuitive) the reverse tends to happen, no matter how you try to stagger the freighters' cycles.
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Post by Triaxx2 » Sat, 28. Oct 17, 16:18

One final note, open the menu for your CLS ship and go to jump drive. There you can manually configure the amount of fuel it grabs. I usually set it for 1k, as anything less seems to run out of fuel abnormally often.
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Post by jlehtone » Sat, 28. Oct 17, 16:49

The jump fuel reserve default for Union Pilots is 10% of cargo space.
(The default is also not to use JD for trading.)

Pilots that cannot use JD for trade runs seem to keep 40 ECells for emergencies.
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Post by Timsup2nothin » Sat, 28. Oct 17, 18:02

Triaxx2 wrote:One final note, open the menu for your CLS ship and go to jump drive. There you can manually configure the amount of fuel it grabs. I usually set it for 1k, as anything less seems to run out of fuel abnormally often.
I feel a need to put together a CLS jump fuel guide, because I seldom set them for more than 300 and my guys never run out of fuel. I'm short on time right now, but I'll be working on that.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Post by bbn » Sat, 28. Oct 17, 22:35

Thanks for the answer!
Timsup2nothin wrote:
bbn wrote: @Tim, how do you manage your freighters in case of not having a homebase assigned? The idea is interesting but I am worried about cluttering my property list with CLS traders...
As an example, all the traders in my aforementioned BHS Bakery Co-Op are assigned to a Magnetar as a homebase, so they don't show on my property list. The Magnetar is named, conveniently, BHS Bakery Co-Op HQ, and whenever I want to see how things are going I just look at it and open "owned ships." It's also loaded with fighters and will serve as my rapid response force in BHS, and has a low level CLS pilot tasked with buying tech goods from the fabs in BHS if they get too cheap to pass up.
Ah! :idea: Right now it seems so obvious when you stated it!
Timsup2nothin wrote:
bbn wrote: 1. What happens when I change waypoints for CLS trader mid-flight (without re-issuing Start External Commodity Logistic command)? Do the CLS2 pilots use the new route after finishing one loop or is it ignored? What I would like to do is to extend the list of stations as I uncover more sectors without needing to manage the pilot (catching him manually with empty cargo hold or selling/unloading what he has currently in the cargo).
They will continue through the current loop, then change when the waypoint list restarts. If you want them to change immediately hit the "start CLS" option, but that will be a cold restart at the beginning of your new list. For the situation you described, adding new customers to the end of the list, just adding them and letting the guy finish his current loop shouldn't cause any problems.
Thanks, that's what I needed exactly. I've tested it and it runs as you described. Also, nice thing is that even significantly altering the way points list is working OK.
Timsup2nothin wrote:
bbn wrote: 2. Is there a way of limiting 'generate waypoints' by races? Of course I can edit the list manually, but this takes lot's of time when setting up multiple traders... I want to cover whole galaxy, but skip those pesky Parandits, as I don't won't to aid the economy of my enemies :evil:
Well, my first answer is "don't do that." Hitting generate waypoints in some "whole galaxy" fashion will almost always produce a waypoint list that is too long for the ship to manage anyway. What I mean is that if you are working with a ship to sell, say, ore, the customers at the end of the list will never get served because the ship will always sell out before it gets that far. I use regional distributors and I still find that it is very easy to overload a ship and have under served customers down towards the bottom of the list if I try to service too many sectors with each ship.

Second answer is, no, generate waypoints is a machete, not a scalpel. You'll always have to do some manual pruning for the kind of specific applications an active enemy race creates. That's part of the reason having an active enemy increases the challenges.
I wasn't worried that some of the customers wouldn't be served. At that time I just wanted to empty my ore overflow tank and get as high price as possible in a way that was as fastest as possible. In the meantime I added additional sellers and buyers from far away... I got greedy :oops:

But after reading your answer I started to think. Basically what I did is I changed my CLS freighters into some dumber variations of UT. Good profitsss short term, but huge impact on the Galaxy long-term (as my goal is to dominate economically whole Galxy, region-by-region). So I got back to initial idea: just one overflow seller with a tightly controlled waypoint list (Kingdom End works for me, as obviously Borons are allies ;-) ).
Timsup2nothin wrote: All very good questions, by the way. Keep on keeping on, and welcome to the X universe.
Thanks :). One new is coming your way ;-)

I established new company, Argon Local Foodstuff Guild with HQ in Argon Prime (2xL Cahoona Bakeries). Right now I have all the local Cahoona Bakeries trapped (buy at minimum), 2 CAG sellers set-up temporarily (just to keep ALFG account from tanking). As Argon Prime region is flooded with meatsteakes I was thinking about buying for min, selling for average+1.

So I'm starting to set up traps for selling and distributors (HQ->Trap). And I see that I am seeing a potential problem in the future. Some NPC factories (e.g., Image Recognition Production Complex, IRPC) have only 1 docking port, but 4 resources (IRPC consumes e-cells, ore, meatsteaks and silicon). How to handle distribution of goods to consumers in this way? Ideally for this example I would have 4 selling-traps, for each resource and 4 distributors for each selling-trap.

I set up my ore distributors in such a way, that they load at HQ, fly to selling-trap, and unload. So in the above example, I already have 4 ports occupied (trap+distributor for ore, trap+distributor for meatsteaks). So my e-cell selling freighter (this one is set up as having multiple selling points) will not be able to dock (I don't care right now if I make all the e-cells sales in the region, I just want to make sure that all factories are running).

What do you do in such situation? Right now I see only one solution to this problem:
a) Fly-by-selling a.k.a selling like CAG would do (possibly from some locally-set up factory as a distribution center) for some of the resources
b) Trap-based selling for rest of them (probably for those with higher profit margins).

RAVEN.myst wrote: I have only one detail to add, in case it is or becomes relevant: early in my days using CLS2, I thought of brute-forcing them by using and sharing long itineraries, and letting them sort themselves out - basically, I hoped they might emulate CAGs' ability to coordinate amongst themselves - well, that doesn't work. What ended up happening is that multiple freighters would end up syncing up in an undesirable way: the first few customers would all be stocked up, for example, so several CLS2s running the same route would end up flying in almost a convoy, all heading for the next customer, and tripping over each other, as it were. Here's an example:
:oops: Wish I read it sooner. I already encountered the same situation that you described. Seeing how good my WeedCo Inc. company was doing with selling Herron's Nebula's Space Fuel with just a few Argon Discoverers... I added a couple more and being lazy just copied the waypoints from the ones that were already flying... Right now you probably know what I arrived at in the end... The solution for me was to tailor each of the discoverer way point list so they would not overlap too much...
Timsup2nothin wrote:
Triaxx2 wrote:One final note, open the menu for your CLS ship and go to jump drive. There you can manually configure the amount of fuel it grabs. I usually set it for 1k, as anything less seems to run out of fuel abnormally often.
I feel a need to put together a CLS jump fuel guide, because I seldom set them for more than 300 and my guys never run out of fuel. I'm short on time right now, but I'll be working on that.
Yay! Please do! I so much enjoy reading your guides :)


Also, I am wondering... Why your CLS guide is not on this list :?

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Post by Timsup2nothin » Sun, 29. Oct 17, 00:45

bbn wrote:
I established new company, Argon Local Foodstuff Guild with HQ in Argon Prime (2xL Cahoona Bakeries). Right now I have all the local Cahoona Bakeries trapped (buy at minimum), 2 CAG sellers set-up temporarily (just to keep ALFG account from tanking). As Argon Prime region is flooded with meatsteakes I was thinking about buying for min, selling for average+1.

So I'm starting to set up traps for selling and distributors (HQ->Trap). And I see that I am seeing a potential problem in the future. Some NPC factories (e.g., Image Recognition Production Complex, IRPC) have only 1 docking port, but 4 resources (IRPC consumes e-cells, ore, meatsteaks and silicon). How to handle distribution of goods to consumers in this way? Ideally for this example I would have 4 selling-traps, for each resource and 4 distributors for each selling-trap.

I set up my ore distributors in such a way, that they load at HQ, fly to selling-trap, and unload. So in the above example, I already have 4 ports occupied (trap+distributor for ore, trap+distributor for meatsteaks). So my e-cell selling freighter (this one is set up as having multiple selling points) will not be able to dock (I don't care right now if I make all the e-cells sales in the region, I just want to make sure that all factories are running).

What do you do in such situation? Right now I see only one solution to this problem:
a) Fly-by-selling a.k.a selling like CAG would do (possibly from some locally-set up factory as a distribution center) for some of the resources
b) Trap-based selling for rest of them (probably for those with higher profit margins).
One solution is to use bigger traps.

I generally use all the same size ships for trafficking...usually 3000 unit. So a Mercury that doesn't jump I expand cargo to 3030 to accommodate shields and a jumping Mercury I expand cargo to 3330 for shields and 300 jump fuel.

At a typical NPC factory where I want to use trap supplied ore and energy I'll post a beat up XL freighter with capacity of over 6000 and set it for selling ore and e-cells at whatever price, max cargo. Your transports have to be set to unload to the trap, but instead of max cargo use unload up to 3000 for e cells and unload up to 375 for ore so the seller can handle both. Super XL hulks are harder to come by, but with capacity over 9000 they can be set up to handle three resources the same way.
Trapper Tim's Guide to CLS 2

On Her Majesty's Secret Service-Dead is Dead, and he is DEAD

Not a DiD, so I guess it's a DiDn't, the story of my first try at AP
Part One, in progress

HEY! AP!! That's new!!!

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Post by Triaxx2 » Sun, 29. Oct 17, 02:01

I don't do the trapping thing and have CLS ships jumping all around the Commonwealth, so I need the much higher fuel settings. Of course I like to use lots of Mistral Super Freighters, so I have the cargo space to spare.
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Post by bbn » Sun, 29. Oct 17, 12:08

Timsup2nothin wrote: One solution is to use bigger traps.

I generally use all the same size ships for trafficking...usually 3000 unit. So a Mercury that doesn't jump I expand cargo to 3030 to accommodate shields and a jumping Mercury I expand cargo to 3330 for shields and 300 jump fuel.

At a typical NPC factory where I want to use trap supplied ore and energy I'll post a beat up XL freighter with capacity of over 6000 and set it for selling ore and e-cells at whatever price, max cargo. Your transports have to be set to unload to the trap, but instead of max cargo use unload up to 3000 for e cells and unload up to 375 for ore so the seller can handle both. Super XL hulks are harder to come by, but with capacity over 9000 they can be set up to handle three resources the same way.
That should do the trick. Thank you!

The only problem I see with this approach is division of profits between companies (apart from updating ~70 freighters). Right now I keep the selling of the product to the company that is buying the product. This allows me to better monitor profits that the companies are making. With a multi-product selling trap this is not possible. Any ideas how to tackle it?

Triaxx2 wrote:I don't do the trapping thing and have CLS ships jumping all around the Commonwealth, so I need the much higher fuel settings. Of course I like to use lots of Mistral Super Freighters, so I have the cargo space to spare.
I do the same thing :D for my long-range sellers (those CLS traders that need to empty overflow tanks). For my local jump-capable traders (Argon Prime region) I think I managed to set the fuel to levels that are closer to the optimal levels (as they only need to jump through 3 sectors at once at most).

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Post by Timsup2nothin » Sun, 29. Oct 17, 21:47

bbn wrote:
The only problem I see with this approach is division of profits between companies (apart from updating ~70 freighters). Right now I keep the selling of the product to the company that is buying the product. This allows me to better monitor profits that the companies are making. With a multi-product selling trap this is not possible. Any ideas how to tackle it?


Unfortunately, no. You can make a 'running estimate' by how the sellers are assigned. If you have four combined ore/energy sellers, for example, assign three of them to the ore company and one to the energy company. Otherwise, this calls for combining your local companies into one regional resource conglomerate.
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Post by bbn » Mon, 30. Oct 17, 16:30

Timsup2nothin wrote:
bbn wrote:
The only problem I see with this approach is division of profits between companies (apart from updating ~70 freighters). Right now I keep the selling of the product to the company that is buying the product. This allows me to better monitor profits that the companies are making. With a multi-product selling trap this is not possible. Any ideas how to tackle it?


Unfortunately, no. You can make a 'running estimate' by how the sellers are assigned. If you have four combined ore/energy sellers, for example, assign three of them to the ore company and one to the energy company. Otherwise, this calls for combining your local companies into one regional resource conglomerate.
Ah, that's too bad. On a freighter-to-freighter basis this will become a nightmare to monitor ;-). Fortunately at a scale of many freighters your approach should work OK. Thanks!

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Post by RAVEN.myst » Tue, 31. Oct 17, 15:28

Timsup2nothin wrote:I feel a need to put together a CLS jump fuel guide.
You probably already know and use the following, but since I use centralised depots for my wares, here it is just in case, and you're welcome to use it if applicable:

This whole topic started with the potential trickiness of selling ECs via CLS2, given the conflict between it being a tradeable ware and the jump fuel. I faced a similar problem selling ECs via CAG from a trade dock, too - selling out the ECs, thus draining the fuel reserve and stranding the traders, ie. a protected fuel reserve not dipped into for export purposes, yet integrated with it.) When using CLS2, I now have this approach (which is derived from your own "tank" concept.)

- Let's call the fuel tank "FUEL DEPOT", and the sellable EC store as "ENERGY WAREHOUSE"
- I dock both at the same station (I've been using a Free Argon Trading Station, which has 10 docking ports, and it's usually adequate - and when it isn't I have a dead-simple solution, which I'll cover at the end)
- I treat the two freighters as liquid tanks stacked on top of each other and linked, essentially (this metaphor may help explain the system)
- All energy buyers dump their ECs into the ENERGY WAREHOUSE
- All energy sellers draw their sale stock from ENERGY WAREHOUSE
- All CLS2 freighters refuel from FUEL DEPOT
- Both FUEL DEPOT and ENERGY WAREHOUSE run a CLS2 command to move full hold of EC to FUEL DEPOT (this is redundant - only one of them needs to have it, but I like to have them both running it, so that the transfer happens twice as frequently)
- What this essentially means is that the EC buyers are pouring their ECs into the WAREHOUSE, and from there it "drains" into the FUEL DEPOT until it's full. Any time a ship refuels and thus reduces the amount in DEPOT, ECs from WAREHOUSE "drain down" into it to refill it (assuming there's anything in WAREHOUSE.) It also means that the traders never try to sell fuel reserve - they only get to fill up their inventory from the "top" tank. In this way, the fuel reserve is not touched even though it is not separate from the EC in stock.
- Now, if the trading station gets overloaded with docked ships, it is possible for one of these storage ships to undock to make room, and then I've found that for some reason it doesn't always re-dock, even though it's trying to execute the "Move to [other_freighter]" step - easy solution: both FUEL DEPOT and ENERGY WAREHOUSE also have a "Fly to station" command, to remind them to re-dock if/when necessary (of course, if things are running smoothly, ships are flying in and out all the time and spending little time clogging up the parking lot.)

The above "daisy-chain" can be set up with any number of freighters, each "draining down" to the next, if a large enough fuel reserve becomes necessary. Also, multiple tanks like this allow a prioritised approach: The sellers that sell for the highest price (or perhaps have a high priority for some other reason, such as they serve important factories that must be kept running) get to pull stock from the "lowest" allowed tank (aka "Warehouse"), so they are the first to deliver wares when they are available. The lower priority sellers "drink" from the higher tanks, thus they get to deliver when there's abundant surplus, but are the first to reined in if/when stocks run low (which ideally shouldn't be happening often, if at all.) Note however that ALL freighters get refuelled from the "lowest" tank, the one that always has ECs in it, as jump fuel reliability is the top priority. [That being said, I can see scenarios where short-range, lower priority traders that can be allowed to sometimes "walk" to their customers may refuel from the second-"lowest" tank, though I've not needed to indulge such a contingency.]


I hope the above is of help to someone :)


____________________
| ENERGY WAREHOUSE | <---- In (EC buyers stock)
|___________________| ---> Out (EC sellers stock)

. . . . . |
. . . . . | (WAREHOUSE Unload to DEPOT and/or DEPOT Load from WAREHOUSE)
. . . . . V
____________
| FUEL DEPOT |
|___________| --> Refuel (All CLS2 traders served here)

(System "fills up" from the bottom up)


[EDIT]
It occurs to me that the above approach can also be used for any ware that is to be both used internally (say, by factories) and traded. For example, one could set up two ore "bin" freighters. The "lower" one, which is constantly being topped up from the other one, is used to keep factories running (internal industrial use), while exporters sell "off the top". For energy cells, one would set up a three-tier setup, with the bottom one for jumpdrive refuelling, the middle one for supplying one's own factories, and the uppermost one for trading.
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