[4.0 HF2][COH] Terraforming projects breaking trading logic for player ships - Explained.

[elektrohawk]

as per title, game version 4.0 Hotfix2, All dlc, no mods at all (fully vanilla)

I've moved my PHQ to Getsu Fune, and whenever I choose a terraforming project, two very serious problems happen

1) my Headquarters is no longer able to properly order goods from my ships. Traders assigned to the phq update their warebaskets to only contain the items required by the terraforming project, however, they almost never find any trades for these items, despite my having VERY large stockpiles under 50km away in system. They have no problem sourcing these goods when I'm not doing a terraforming project, but the moment I do, it's like they can't find them, and when they do, they start ordering very small amounts. The first ship will get like, 175 shield components, then the next 2 ships will get 1 each. This includes ships set to repeat order trades: They properly collect the full volume of goods at my warehouse, but when then they can't sell almost any of it at the headquarters, despite there being valid buy orders up. I have tried, and am able to manually fly a ship to the station and sell to the buy orders, but my ships cannot. Further, other faction's ships seem to be able to sell to them, if I unrestrict it. Please note these wares are trade restricted to my faction in this save.

2) The same problem happens to any station I have that is trying to acquire materials for construction. The station itself can trade normally, but the build storage cannot purchase any goods from my ships exclusively, nor can any traders assigned to the build storage, nor will any traders belonging to me, assigned to my warehouses.

For any dev reviewing this game save:

• The PHQ is not at this very moment running a terraforming project, but the error happened while doing clean up toxins, and genetically modify toxic fruit, I imagine it will for any others too
• Vast stockpiles of goods are available to the south east of the PHQ about 50km at the Getsu Fune Warehouse
• A terraforming project is not active at the moment of this save, but starting a new one should cause the problem to resurface as it did both previous times
• The build storages nearby MAY have filled their orders, but adding anything additional to them once a new terraforming project is started should reveal the problem there too.
• Sorry for the lag, and my ship being right near a hostile rattlesnake...

https://www.mediafire.com/file/snavgl90 ... ml.gz/file

I can be reached on discord for further info as Arronicus

[BurnIt!]

First of all thanks for the detailed report and especially the key fact list, that was helpful.

In a nutshell: the problem seems to be that your HQ just doesn't have enough money in the account. I did start the toxin cleanup project and that requires more funds than the station currently has, so the trade offers visible to any subordinates or external traders will only be able to cover a fraction of the necessary amount.
If you personally trade this is essentially a ware exchange where money doesn't change hands and you can see how many of a ware the HQ really wants, not just how much it can afford.
Subordinates to your HQ still need to pay when they buy from your warehouse or any of your other factories there so they are only allowed to buy as much as their homebase is willing to pay for. (and it reserves some money for all the other resources it wants to buy)
Subordinates of the warehouse or the other factories are also limited by the funds the HQ has. They only see the buy offer amounts your HQ is able to afford.

That same situation applies to the build storages. It doesn't matter if it's only your own trade ships, they still expect that they get money from the build storage when they deliver and as long as you have not assigned enough funds for construction the build storage isn't going to pay them.

<snip>
Sorry for the lag, and my ship being right near a hostile rattlesnake...
</snip>

Thank you for your concern - our dev ways can keep us safe in such scenarios

[Raevyan]

Subordinates to your HQ still need to pay when they buy from your warehouse or any of your other factories there so they are only allowed to buy as much as their homebase is willing to pay for. (and it reserves some money for all the other resources it wants to buy)

Subordinates of my stations do not transfer money when buying from my other stations?

[gorman2040]

I added the information from BurnIt to the wiki: https://www.egosoft.com:8444/confluence ... Management.

I believe this is a very important information that is overlooked by some players (me included).

Thanks for the info !

[flatbush71]

I wish there was a way Up Vote Egosoft staff.
You guys supply more information to an old Electrical Engineer than you'll ever realize...................