My Wharf doesn't trade its ressources !

[Symont]

Hi,

Do Wharf behave differently than other stations?

I have over 10 stations and they all work fine. I always set a sell offer on everything being produced. For the intermediate goods, i manually set the amount to sell about halfway so i always have enough for production. I see this as selling my "overstock". It works fine and it brings me quite a lot of money without slowing down my production.

I recently completed an almost self-sufficient Wharf. I set everything the same way i did for other stations, but somehow the traders associated to the wharf never sell anything! I have NPC traders coming in and buying, but my own traders never go out to sell. I have a 5 star manager so he's not the problem.... i guess.... i hope, and there is more than enough money in the station's account.

By the way, the problem is not a lack of buyers, there is a shipyard one jump away that needs over 90 000 antimatter converters. My wharf has 32 000 and is producing more than it's using. I can manually tell my traders to sell and they bring a ton of money (Shipyard is paying +40%!!). Why can't they do this on their own?

When i look at the behavior tab, i see that the traders are on "autotrade", but only for the ressources i don't produce on the station (food, medical supplies, drone components).
How can i get my traders to go out and sell?

What can i do about this? Please, help!

Thanks

[dark7np]

I've honestly never really seen my traders selling things. Or actively pushing their produced resources to my other stations that need them. What seems to sort of work is stations gathering resources they need. And my dedicated trading stations sort of seem to sell things, at least they're making money. I've never really understood the logic behind traders and how they behave in X4...

So if someone can shed some light on that, I'm all ears. Put it in the wiki, ideally.

[Nort The Fragrent]

I have my Wharfs only producing Electricity as a by product, the stations sell EC’s well.
The rest of the fleet go and get the resources for the Wharf as priority. Works very well.
Station logic is a conundrum that ES can not explain, as even they don't know whats going on.
If they did , there would be a comprehensive Video on the subject, Alas there is not to my knowledge. Least not from ES.
Best option is to keep your stations small, fine tune them. This can take decades to master!

[Symont]

I've honestly never really seen my traders selling things.

My traders from other stations do it all the time. You can see what they are doing in the behavior tab of each trader. They buy from their station and sell to other ones. I'm doing everything the same way for my Wharf but the *$%%? traders don't do anything!

[dark7np]

Sure I can look at their orders, their logs and so on. Doesn't mean I understand what's going on... A lot of trades are small volume, small price. Nothing to impress, nothing I would have chosen.

Maybe traders behave different depending on what a station is? Like for intermediate wares they do things different than for end products? I've seen a trading station guide by Captain Collins on YT that explicitly states to not put any production modules at all on a trading station under no circumstances or things break. Maybe having a ship fabrication module changes things? I dunno.

I've set my fabs to internal trade only, my shipyards are just shipyards, they don't produce things. Only thing allowed to trade externally are dedicated trading stations, which are placed here and there. That seems to make things run sorta smoothly for my stations (they're not self sufficient), but I'm not impressed with the selling to the AI that is going on. Can you share some of your setup for stations where wares get sold to the AI? I'd be interested to see how that looks like.

[RodentofDoom]

A wharf's products are ships
the tier3 products of other factories are it's resources
none its resource wares are listed as intermediary items

factories buy resources
factories buy & sell intermediary wares
factories sell products

A wharf/shipyard is the easiest factory to build
a pier or dock
a build module
1 container storage

nothing else is needed, and even defence modules are optional and location based.

[Symont]

I guess my mistake is to have created a superstation with everything on it. I should have created a complex of multiple separate factories, each producing a couple of end products for the shipyard. It seems that having too many production modules on one station confuses the poor manager

As for my traders, they are not the most efficient, i'll give you that. They often take only a small amount of goods. But at least they do take some goods to sell and bring in a profit. My wharf's traders don't.

Here is a typical station (https://ibb.co/NTHzWFq). I always add a "restrict all factions" trade order so I don't buy from anyone else. I keep a sell order open to every factions and put the amount to sell in the middle. That way i have ressources for production and my traders sell the rest. The end product, in this case hull parts, has no sell limit of course.

I don't know if it's the best way to set my stations, but it works fine and brings in money.... except for my wharf

[grapedog]

I guess my mistake is to have created a superstation with everything on it. I should have created a complex of multiple separate factories, each producing a couple of end products for the shipyard. It seems that having too many production modules on one station confuses the poor manager

As for my traders, they are not the most efficient, i'll give you that. They often take only a small amount of goods. But at least they do take some goods to sell and bring in a profit. My wharf's traders don't.

Here is a typical station (https://ibb.co/NTHzWFq). I always add a "restrict all factions" trade order so I don't buy from anyone else. I keep a sell order open to every factions and put the amount to sell in the middle. That way i have ressources for production and my traders sell the rest. The end product, in this case hull parts, has no sell limit of course.

I don't know if it's the best way to set my stations, but it works fine and brings in money.... except for my wharf

I've no idea for sure, but I'm guessing that a wharf manager doesn't look to sell the same materials it needs to build ships. As someone else stated, all the products you produce for your wharf, are not the end products. the end products are ships... and I would think a wharf wouldn't sell the stuff it will need to produce the end products.

[Symont]

I think i solved it ! Or at least i found a way to make it work !

I've no idea for sure, but I'm guessing that a wharf manager doesn't look to sell the same materials it needs to build ships.

That's the impression i had. The fact that the icon of the station is different than the other stations is kinda pointing in that direction too. This is not an ordinary station.

So to make things work i simply created another station with only docking and tons of storage - this is now my "Trade Center". I set the trade wares to be all the goods from the wharf that i want to sell, set them to buy only from my stations and gave 20 traders to the manager. At first my Trade Center was only getting goods from the wharf but after some time it also started selling to other faction's stations.

Not the most simple way to do it (as usual with this game) but at least it's working now...

[grapedog]

I think i solved it ! Or at least i found a way to make it work !

I've no idea for sure, but I'm guessing that a wharf manager doesn't look to sell the same materials it needs to build ships.

That's the impression i had. The fact that the icon of the station is different than the other stations is kinda pointing in that direction too. This is not an ordinary station.

So to make things work i simply created another station with only docking and tons of storage - this is now my "Trade Center". I set the trade wares to be all the goods from the wharf that i want to sell, set them to buy only from my stations and gave 20 traders to the manager. At first my Trade Center was only getting goods from the wharf but after some time it also started selling to other faction's stations.

Not the most simple way to do it (as usual with this game) but at least it's working now...

I just produce as little excess as possible, and then I forbid my traders to trade mid tier wares, but allow NPC's to come and pick them up if they want em. Makes sure my traders are selling the expensive stuff, not the cheap stuff, lol.

6 of one, half dozen of the other.