[MOD] MT Station Logistics - Last update: v1.36 - 01 January 2017

[wysiwyg]

MitchTech Station Logistics

+++++ ANNOUNCEMENT 11th July 2016+++++


2016/07/11 - v1.33 - Fixes problem with intermediate wares in waypoint search function

2016/07/11 - v1.32 - Update now allows warehouses to be selected as waypoints + some other minor fixes.

2016/06/27 - v1.31 - Fixes relating to XRv4.00 (Finally!!!) - Massive thanks and all the credit to lenjoj for finding the bugs!

+++++ ANNOUNCEMENT 3rd April 2015 +++++


2015/04/03 - v1.30 - New features - Much improved waypoint add screen, improved tracking display now shows current waypoint and updates properly. See here

2015/03/27 - v1.25 - Now features compatibility check for YAT, JLP Unitrader and (if you have HumanResource by Vim Razz installed) Euclid's AutoTraders. See here Thanks to Vim Razz for help with this

2015/03/22 - v1.20 - new features:
CV supply: On the ship admin screen you will now see a "ship setup" button that will take you to a screen where you can choose to have your ship supply construction vessels that have buy orders. Select yes and the trader will automatically check to see if any of its cargo matches a buy offer at any of your CVs within range of the trader's homebase. If it has enough wares on board to complete the trade it will divert from its current waypoints and supply the CV. Once there are no more viable CV trades the ship will resume its normal waypoint route.

Improved menus: Ships and stations now sorted alphabetically and remaining row selection glitches have been fixed.

Other - lots of other minor improvements, fixes and optimisations.

Now with French translation - many thanks to Ronkhar

User manual now available for download

== Introduction ==

The folks in the R&D department at MitchTech Corporation went on the internet and found this They got to thinking: "How hard could it be?" Well, after many hours, gallons of spacefuel, lashings of pizza and some pancakes MitchTech Corporation is proud to present its second update for the Pride of Albion user interface.

As usual MitchTech focuses on improvements that enhance the lives of budding empire builders and this mod is no exception. Unhappy with the ad hoc way trade was being conducted in the known galaxy, MitchTech has produced a trade ship orders system using the latest state-of-the-art communication and encryption technology, ensuring traders go where you want and sell what you want. No more cargo going missing (ever wondered why crew where quite happy to work for nothing? - they were "losing" cargo quite often weren't they!!) - No more dumb captains and dumb managers trading stuff that suited them because they were too lazy to analyse routes and buy what the station needed as opposed to what made a quick buck close to the best bars and nightclubs. Unfortunately, the Teladi trader's union got wind of this innovative technology close to release and we had to modify the software to guarantee pilots being paid a wage as they would no longer be able to "pay" their own wages out of "your" profits. Having threatened to go on strike and *cough* bring the galaxy's economy to a *cough* halt we decided it was better to meet their demands than attract the adverse publicity of a trade boycott on launch.

== Features ==
- Plan a series of waypoints for a station trader - set location, ware, buy, sell, amount and price
- Trader follows waypoints in order, skipping those that are not valid allowing complex supply chains to be set up
- Higher skilled crews can fly further from homebase and have more waypoints
- Crews earn experience points as well as a salary and can be trained using experience points and a small cash sum
- Highest level crews are paid commission on sales to NPC stations in addition to salary based on flight time
- Logs for each trader, an admin log and crew member logs including crew rank increase with XP earned (also a feature to rename crew members!)
- Extensive UI checking to prevent invalid entries e.g. ensures only ware types that can be carried are available to select on waypoint edit screen
- Uninstall command for removing mod from savegames

== Download ==

Steam Workshop

Source code, design notes and other bits on GitHub

== Getting Started ==
1. Subscribe to the mod on steam and it will automagically be added to your game.

2. Press enter to get the sidebar menu --> select the trade icon --> select MT Station Logistics

3. Highlight "Administer Trade Ships" in the list and click on "Select" button

4. You will be presented with a screen with a list of unconfigured ships. Expand the list and select a ship that you want to trade with. Note that ships will only appear in this list if: i) They have a captain, ii) they are not in your squad, iii) they are not assigned to a station or another ship, iv) they have at least 5 cargo lifter drones onboard.

5. Highlight your chosen ship and click the "Add" button - this adds your ship to the trader list

6. Select the ship again and click "Homebase" - select the station you want the trader to work for from the map (Yes you need to own at least one station!)

7. Now click on the "Configure" button and add some waypoints (you need at least two waypoints before you can start the trader)

8. The next screen allows you to manage a list of the ship's waypoints. You can add, edit, re-order, cut and paste waypoints.

9. Click on the "Add Waypoint" button to bring up the waypoint add/edit screen. Here you'll need to select the station to trade with, the action (buy, sell etc) the ware type, and the minimum amount required to fly the waypoint (you can also set a maximum/desired amount) and of course price limits.

10. Once all the required information is added you will be able to click the "Save" button to add the waypoint and take you back to the waypoint list screen.

11. Repeat steps 9 and 10 until you have a route defined (note that the software will help prevent you making invalid choices but it will not stop you making dumb choices - e.g. if you give a ship 5 sell waypoints and no buy waypoints it will not do anything because it has nothing to sell!)

12. Once your waypoint list is complete, click on the "Save" button to return to the ship list.

13. Highlight the trader again and click on the "Start" button to set your trader off on its chosen route.

Note the following:

1. Active traders are assigned to their chosen homebase and will show up under the station's tab in the vanilla property menu.

2. All transactions for sales by the trader and wages/commission paid will be conducted using the homebase station's account. (except for crew training)

3. You can see what the trader has been up to in the reports section.

== Uninstalling ==
Backup your savegame!!
Select "Configure" from the first menu screen then select "Uninstall" from the next screen.
Now save the game and exit the game.
Unsubscribe from the mod on steam (if you wish you can also delete the folder in the extensions folder)
Start the game again and load the most recent save. Save this game again and you should now have a squeeky clean save file!

== Change History ==
v1.36 - Fix for being unable to correctly set waypoints for Scaldis transport ship.
v1.35 - Improvements to text localisation files - many thanks to alexalsp for these edits Smile
v1.34 - Fix for multi-cargo ships being unable to load wares at warehouses and/or homebase. Please Note: The new method of adding waypoints won't pick up your ship's home base. If you need to configure a waypoint at your home base then use the old "map select" method.
v1.33 - Fixes problem with intermediate wares in waypoint search function
v1.32 - Update now allows warehouses to be selected as waypoints + some other minor fixes.
v1.31 - Fixes relating to XRv4.00 (Finally!!!) - Massive thanks and all the credit to lenjoj for finding the bugs!
v1.30 - New Add Waypoint menu, Improved tracking display
v1.26 - Fixed not being able to set waypoints for Hermods and Leptons.
v1.25 - Further fixes, optimisations and mod compatibility changes.
v1.21 - Fixes newly added ships crashing the UI (introduced in v1.20)
v1.20 - new features:
CV supply: On the ship admin screen you will now see a "ship setup" button that will take you to a screen where you can choose to have your ship supply construction vessels that have buy orders. Select yes and the trader will automatically check to see if any of its cargo matches a buy offer at any of your CVs within range of the trader's homebase. If it has enough wares on board to complete the trade it will divert from its current waypoints and supply the CV. Once there are no more viable CV trades the ship will resume its normal waypoint route.

Improved menus: Ships and stations now sorted alphabetically and remaining row selection glitches have been fixed.

Other - lots of other minor improvements, fixes and optimisations.

v1.11 - Fixed a bug where the Reports screen would crash after a logistics ship was destroyed
v1.10 - Fixed bug that prevented newly added ships from being configured
Fixed a bug that prevented return to homebase working properly
Updated mod for non beta-users so everyone should now be on v1.10
v1.09 - Fixed compatibility with v3.50 beta 3 - Sidebar Extender no longer required
v1.08 - Fixed compatibility with v3.50 beta - mod now uses Phipsz(Chudnofsky) Sidebar Extender
v1.07 - Now includes French translation - thanks to Ronkhar
v1.06 - Fix for ship and admin log sizes as savegames were getting a bit large; Ship log now last 100 entries; admin log last 500 entries; Tracking log was already limited
v1.05 - Fixes further issue with turnover display
Fixes missing null sweep events
Improves ship undocking behaviour
Minor tweaks to menu navigation
v1.04 - Minor updates: Improves row selection on return from waypoint edit screen;
Remove some debugging info from shiplog screen;
Fixed an issue with double counting and logging of turnover amount;
Other minor UI tweeks
v1.03 - Fix a small issue where the ship select screen causes a crash on first time access
v1.02 - Removed some unfiltered debug messages
v1.01 - First public release - Increased XP earned per trip.
v1.00 - First Release

== Known issues ==
If you rename crew then uninstall the mod you are stuck with the new name

== TODO: Suggestions and bug reports are most welcome ==
DONE - Auto waypoint list generation
DONE - Detailed instructions/manual
DONE - Fix row selection glitches
DONE - Allow trade with player owned construction vessels
* Load and save waypoint lists
* Maybe add M sized ships
* Do something similar with miners (the vanilla ones are fine to be honest but it would be nice if they could sell to NPCs when the station doesn't need stuff they mine)
* Ship-Ship transfers
* Apply some love to the UI for joystick and gamepad users
* Look at the possibility of allowing Experienced Autotrader Captains from Euclid's Autotrader mod trade as CLS traders at the appropriate range.

== Technical ==
Text ID Page 150402
Patched vanilla scripts - trade.station.player <- to prevent manager using logistics ships

== Credits ==
Lucike - for the inspiration and the "Original" CLS trader concept
Mad Joker - lots of bits from MJ's library and UFO mod used here
Ronkhar - French translations
Vim Razz - Help and inspiration with XR mod compatibility
lenjoj - Fixes for v4.00 of XR

[w.evans]

Thanks, wysiwyg!

And funny avatar! Whenever I see it, I always feel like I did something wrong, and I have an impulse to look at what I just typed.

[TheDeliveryMan]

Very interesting, I'll have to check this out!

I already did something similar several months ago. But due to RL issues I never got around to implement a proper UI for it.

[wysiwyg]

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

This sounds nice

Thanks!

Do the ships loop around after they finished at their last destination in the chain?

[wysiwyg]

[Sparky Sparkycorp]

Cool. Cheers for the reply.

[wysiwyg]

Minor update to v1.04
v1.04 - Minor updates: Improves row selection on return from waypoint edit screen; Remove some debugging info from shiplog screen; Fixed an issue with double counting and logging of turnover amount; Other minor UI tweeks

[wysiwyg]

Updated first post with download links for Steam and GitHub (sources etc)

== Download ==

Steam Workshop

Source code, design notes and other bits on GitHub

Cheers
Wysi

[wysiwyg]

+++++ ANNOUNCEMENT 1st Feb 2015 +++++

User manual now available for download

Cheers
Wysi

[w.evans]

Hi wysiwyg,

Any chance that you could detect captains trained via Euclid's AutoTrader, and have them have a corresponding level here? Then we'd have the cross-operability that we had with Lucike's CAG and CLS in X3!

I think (but I'm not sure) that Euclid's mod checks for them via things in their inventory (I'm pretty sure that they get an Albion visa upon being inducted into the Most Honorable Siblinghood of AutoTraders.)

[wysiwyg]

Hmm might be doable - my mod uses the entire crew rating to set the range of the ship so even if you have a 5 star captain, if you haven't got a DO and Eng on board the ship is still limited to system range. Each crew member in my mod stores their XP in a blackboard variable - an all time value to set their rank (needs rebalancing and is just for fun anyhow) and spend pot that increases as they trade and decreases when you spend the points to train them up. Training increases their actual skill level (and therefore the entity.combinedskill value) - might need a bit of thought as to how to link this to Euclid's method which I am unfamiliar with - Good idea in principle though so I'll add it to the todo list.

[w.evans]

Thanks! And I do understand that having a certain level in AutoTrader won't ever mean the same thing in MT Station Logistics, because they're two different mods.

An easy way would be to check the name (which I believe you already do?). Euclid's mod adds * to captains' names to denote rank. They're marked *, **, and *** for the three ranks. Would make it open to cheating via save editing the name, though.

[wysiwyg]

Yeah it might be possible (albeit a bit hacky!) to detect Euclid's traders and override my range checks if a ship has an experienced Euclid Autotrader on board.

As for save game hacking - nothing anyone can do about it - you could just as easily cheat my mod by editing the skill values in the save file but, seriously? what's the point? Anyhow that's another discussion entirely

Definitely a good suggestion and definitely added to the do list.

[w.evans]