[MOD] Mules and Warehouses v4.0

[Browser_ice]

Hi, started using your MOD yesterday but I am having some issues. Most of my trader ships are not doing anything on Station Mule and Distribute Mule. Out of 5 traders, only one was doing anything and that was on Station Mule; the others seam to just stay there doing nothing. Travel Mule seams to be working but I only used it on one trader.

It is the only MOD I use.

I have 3 stations in the same sector:
- one shipyard not yet fully built but has a manager and ship trader
- one yard not yet fully built but has a manager and ship trader
- one fully built producing every parts 2x needed for both above and self sufficient

How much money do you have in your budget and do you have buy orders for the things you need in your warehouse? I had an issue where my mules wouldn't move product it was due to not having enough money in the budget. I have a warehouse with 85m storage and i need about 150m in the budget to get them to move everything sufficently. The factories have a budget of 1m credits (to make it easy for me to keep track if it moves) and they buy from the warehouse just fine. But the warehouse needs a large budget due to all the different wares I'm sending to it.

The station to which my Distribute Mules are assigned is the one producing every parts and has 2 times the budget needing for operating (43M for operating). It sells a lot and buys a few.

@Ramokthan, I do not understand. Where is this max trade option? When I change the default behavior to distribute, the only infos I change are the source station and add 2 target stations, nothing else. If you are talking about the general filter options (upper right icon), it is set to a max price = $5000, min vol=none and nb displayed trades=5.

Since my post, I rebooted the game and moved all my Distribute mules to station mules. Now they are doing something.

[Ramokthan]

Sorry i was not clear enough, the tip was regarding my BuyerMule script posted in the thread, but its not jet implemented officially int he mules, so its kind an "addon"

[ThePiercdPrnc]

Since my post, I rebooted the game and moved all my Distribute mules to station mules. Now they are doing something.

I've noticed that distribute mules don't tend to do much. To work around this issue I've got station mules assigned to my defense platform, and they do a good job moving things around where needed. Esp my hull parts to new factories.

[Kamuchi_]

Thanks for the mod and adding to it

I just installed it hoping for less "dumb" behavior and to use it as station builders, but that is kinda lacking with only the cluster function.
Maybe an idea for the feature, adding an "Station builder" option that will only check player owned station build storage orders, this way you can build stations anywhere with a dedicated fleet.
I just had to resort back to TaterTrader with 0 sell and max buy distence, but the ships will go apeshit when stations start getting built and befor I have enough stuff being made locally to supply station building priority

[Ramokthan]

The BuyerMule (script is posted here in this thread) is able to do this as soon as the first dock is built.

Unfortunatelly you cant select it as a station before any module is built yet, thats why at least one docking module has to be built.

But after assigning a buyer mule to the station and setting it up correctly it will buy the desired wares in no time.

The stationmule can do this too, but he can only pick up the needed goods from own station, thus its useless if you don't produce these goods yourself.

[Kamuchi_]

Right, but that's not what I was suggesting.
Using TaterTrader for example, move ships to local, set sell to 0 and buy to max and limit factions to player only and it works just the way you made your script, just for everything in the system.
I'm not worried about npc's supplying some of the initial materials to build the first module(s), but after that, so you could set a number of ships dedicated to a station that will only look at build storages owned by players.
This would work great as warehouse subs as they would always have materials supplied to it from all over the place and if some normal traders would supply materials then so be it, but having dedicated ships that could travel for how long as they want would be great as they won't be skipping their normal duties distributing wares otherwise nearly all the time unless being in the same system

Hope you can imagine what I mean a bit better.

[Ramokthan]

No i guess you just confused me more....

[Kamuchi_]

Alright, never mind then.

[SladeTalon]

As much as i love the mod so far, i do wonder upon being able to just assign transports to work for the station, and using the manager to handle all the logistics by just telling him the information. lol i can be lazy at times lol

i have issues with my mules not viewing the buy orders fast enough for build storage but i know that is cause they are off doing other trades

[LegionOfOne]

I suggest to wind up the recheck timers a lot... if a lot mules are working and a lot of them are not finding any trade it has a heavy performance impact if you let them check every second.

I won't have time to look at your buyer mule or update the mod until this week-end, but I'd just like to confirm that this is an oversight.
I meant to have 10 seconds between checks, I lowered it during tests and forgot to raise it up again.

I'll correct it in the next version.

I'll also take the time to answer questions this week-end, if the more active forum members haven't answered already (thanks guys and gals).

[Scoob]

Hi,

Just started using this - shudda listend to you sooner lol - the TravelMule looks like it meets my needs perfectly.

One thing though... Is there any way to have a Mule that's assigned to work for a station show in the Property list of said station? This is more for neatness than anything as I'm assigning my "normal" station-assigned M-Class Freighters as Mules now, and they're starting to clutter up my unassigned ship list, where they were neatly hidden before.

If this is at all possible, I think it'd keep things looking tidy and leave only ships that are truly unassigned in the Unassigned Ships list.

Note: I did try assigning a station assigned ship as a Mule, but it of course broke the hierarchy...unless perhaps I did something wrong?

Edit: I'm a numpty....I set the ship up as a Mule a second time, and this time it popped right into the Stations subordinates list! Go figure. Either I screwed up (nahhh lol) or that was some RAPID work by yourself

Cheers,

Scoob.

[Scoob]

Wow, this "just works(tm)" doesn't it? The Travel Mule is exactly what the default station-assigned Freighter behaviour should be. Simple and easy to set up, and does what I want.

I wonder if a "Mining Mule" is in this mods future? Being able to tell ships exactly which resource to collect would be perfect. Default behaviour often goes nuts for a single resource, ignoring all others. It's better than it was for sure, but still needs work. Allowing the player to prioritise which resources to collect via ship assignment would be great.

Thought: Perhaps this is will be unpopular, but I feel that there should be penalties / bonuses based on Captain and Crews experience level. Nothing major, just something like low-level crews have a bit of a wait time between trade jobs - only for the Travel Mule though, as they're directly making profit. The "logistics" type Mules are fine as they are I suspect.

Scoob.

[Ramokthan]

For mining i think there are other mods which can handle the mining more intelligent.

While intelligence is not a property of the Mules.... Will likely never be.

[SladeTalon]

using v4

when a StationMule is assigned to the factories as source and the warehouse as target, they do very little unless the another factory needs energy cells.
with the assign to source they just sit around most the time even tho almost all factories are full.
if i take the assign to source off they start filling the build storage. but if its on nothing...
they will buy from the warehouse but will not sell to the warehouse.

things i noticed.
i found a few that had a few pieces of cargo, emptied it and they seem to start working just not with the warehouse.
my warehouse shows on map it will buy just smart chips and drone parts. but sells everything inside.
every warehouse has 2 SM all declare the target as warehouse all using seller priority some set to trade med,food, EC.
The warehouse is made pretty much of only containers of all 3 types attached to a deference station

Every factory has 5 to 10 mill credits and the warehouse 90 mil.

any thoughts?

[ThePiercdPrnc]

SladeTalon, do you have the other mod that allows you to decide what is being sold at your warehouse? Players and warehouses (iirc) I generally use that one to set up the buy/sell order then my mules do their thing. Ive got 27 factories and they all move things to and from the warehouse. Ive currently got 2 medium and one large mule per factory, other than my ice and EC because those things make HUGE amounts of materials so I have a ton of mules for those. My warehouse has about 300m CR in it and it still wont buy water or EC but it still gets moved even though it says it doesnt buy it. Don't put liq/solid storage on your warehouse it's a waste of time, the mules cant move miner only goods only container goods. Also, this might be a dumb question but...do you have managers at all your stations inc the warehouse? If not mules won't do anything.