I am on my 3rd major playthrough. The first was vanilla (I made bug reports/posts with save files attached while still playing vanilla, but they were not answered), the second was VRO, this one is SWI (Star Wars). But they've all wound up in the same place. Late game inexplicable logistical problems.
In this case, my refined metals won't move, even though I've taken meticulous care over real-life weeks to make sure all demand, all price requirements, all sector travel requirements, all management, all production, all freight capacity, all everything, are satisfied. Last game (VRO) it was drone components. Game before that (vanilla) it was hull parts. But it doesn't matter what it is. I eventually run into a problem where a particular product just WON'T MOVE. Every freighter from the source (in this case, refined metals) just stops and fails orders, even though it has multiple sell opportunities. If this is part of your "human realistic" thing where people just decide to not do what you want, then we need some way to know this. Otherwise, it just looks like a bug. I no longer have the vanilla saves where this happened, so I can't upload a save. But this is the third game in a row where this has happened.
Three real life months of playing this game now. I've had fun with it and definitely gotten my money's worth, but I would KEEP playing if I knew, or could somehow figure out, what the heck was going on. Hence my suggestion you hire someone to play your game full time to report all the inane stuff that people tell you about on your forum every day. I'll probably play this game a few more days just to have some Star Wars fun, but I spent weeks setting up this economy just to run into the same inexplicable late-game economic problem for the third time in a row, and it's frustrating. If anyone else has run into this issue and knows a solution, I'd appreciate hearing it.
Almost immediate edit:
I figured it out after alt-tabbing back to the game after this post. My refined metals fab had assigned literally all 20 of its freighters to find Drone Components, and they are repeatedly failing the order, even though there are more than enough 1 sector away (and this being late-game, the manager is 5 stars, I have updated trade info, the pilots are 4-5 stars, I have the trade license to see these offers, they are covered by satellites anyway, they are allowed to buy unrestricted based on faction, they have money, they are set to use the same parts (universal) to build drones, etc... there are no reasons they should be failing this order). Drone components are what failed my last game as well. I wonder if there is a connection/reason for this. You can't see this problem unless you think to dig into behavior of every single ship. I only needed 135 Drone Components for the station, why you would assign TWENTY freighters to pick up 135 drone components you could fit in your pocket is beyond me. It's nice I figured it out though, otherwise I was done with this save. Now I might get a week or two more out of it.
Next edit:
I was wrong about one thing and I'll admit it. This particular station was not allowed to buy outside of faction (I'd forgotten to allow it to buy drone parts at will), and I had no drone production online yet. Found and fixed. I wonder how many of my previous problems would have been solved with this experience. In any case, I admit I was wrong. Difficult to diagnose, though. And I still think you should hire someone to just play the game full-time to find stuff to fix.
