Bug w/ repro: station subordinates inactive when restricting trade to own faction - Explained.

[object01]

Version and language (e.g. 1.0 English, etc.).
Observed in 4.10 & 4.20 beta 3, English

Game modded?
No

Game start being played
I don't remember; I've been playing this save since release.

Exact nature of the problem, where and when it occurs and what you were doing at the time.
The save file linked below contains a single station with two trader subordinates (and one free-roaming ship that's irrelevant). My goal is for the station to buy and sell ONLY with its subordinates, who in turn should trade with all other stations in the universe. But the subordinates are idle, and complain they "cannot find any trades in allowed sectors" although they and their commanding station have no blacklist configured. I observe that the ships have been tasked with buying water, and there is an eligible seller in the same sector as the station, but they don't seem to recognize it.

Setting the station's "Station Trades" rule to "Use Global Setting" (no restrictions) causes the ships to proceed with trades as expected, but also allows other factions to trade with the station, which I don't want.

Any possibly relevant changes you have made to your game, system, or software before the issue occurred.
N/A

Where appropriate, additional symptoms, error messages, links to screenshots and crash dump files (see this FAQ entry).
Save game that demonstrates the problem: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1-0jk6K ... sp=sharing

Your system specifications in the form of a DxDiag report and vulkaninfo (see this FAQ entry).
dxdiag.txt
vulkaninfo.txt

[Volken32]

Bumping this since i've also encountered this issue

[Ketraar]

There is a misconception I think. Station Subordinates are sent by the manager to buy things that station requires based on the restrictions. If you tell the manager (the station) to only buy things from your faction and you dont have any production, they cant buy anything. If you dont have own production I struggle to understand why you would put trade restrictions in place anyway, you have to buy from NPC, if they deliver or if its your ships getting it.

MFG

Ketraar

[Eyeklops]

From your description this is working as intended. An "only me" style station trade restriction automatically applies to the subordinates because they are working as direct agents of the station.

If your goal is to have a production station that only buys/sells to your ships, but the ships can buy/sell from anybody you'll have to create a separate trade fleet for the ships. Because the auto-trader behavior cannot separately restrict buy and sell orders like stations, the downside to this setup is the trade fleet can complete a full buy/sell loop that doesn't include, or benefit, your stations.

However:
Trade hubs will let production stations move wares out and resources in (food/e-cells/raw materials) while only interacting with your ships. Restrict the trade hub to buy wares production stations need (buy: anybody/sell: only me) and sell what they produce (buy: only me/sell: anybody). On the production stations use a station-wide "only me" trade restriction. From that point you can choose to assign all the traders to the hub or have a few subordinate to the production station. I find a mix is optimal for my setups.

[Volken32]

There is a misconception I think. Station Subordinates are sent by the manager to buy things that station requires based on the restrictions. If you tell the manager (the station) to only buy things from your faction and you dont have any production, they cant buy anything. If you dont have own production I struggle to understand why you would put trade restrictions in place anyway, you have to buy from NPC, if they deliver or if its your ships getting it.

MFG

Ketraar

I was under the assumption that both stations in question (seller and buyer) were player owned - in which case it your explanation makes sense. Thank you for clearing it up.

[object01]

There is a misconception I think. Station Subordinates are sent by the manager to buy things that station requires based on the restrictions. If you tell the manager (the station) to only buy things from your faction and you dont have any production, they cant buy anything. If you dont have own production I struggle to understand why you would put trade restrictions in place anyway, you have to buy from NPC, if they deliver or if its your ships getting it.

MFG

Ketraar

I see... I thought that stations considered the restrictions only with respect to the ships doing the transactions, not the stations those ships transacted with.

As to the reasoning, my thinking went this way: it's better to deal with your own ships than with NPCs. Why? Because I'm assuming that my ships will find better selling prices than those that NPCs bring to my station (because an NPC's goal is to sell as CLOSE to my station's buy price as possible, while my ship's goal is to buy as FAR AWAY from my station's buy price as possible). So, I thought, it's better to have my station deal only with my own ships and exclude NPCs. Is that wrong?

[Ketraar]

Is that wrong?

Its not "wrong" you just need more steps to achieve it. Setting the buy price on the station should be enough though.

Eyeklops agreed to restore his post that contains some additional info to consider.

MFG

Ketraar

[object01]

There is a misconception I think. Station Subordinates are sent by the manager to buy things that station requires based on the restrictions. If you tell the manager (the station) to only buy things from your faction and you dont have any production, they cant buy anything.

So I noticed today that buy offers and sell offers work differently in this respect. Buy offers restricted to only my faction will behave as you describe: my station manager will only buy from my ships who have bought wares from stations I own. But sell offers are more relaxed: my station manager will sell wares to my ships only, but my ships will in turn sell those wares to any faction's station.

Is this intended? I'd expect buy and sell behavior to honor restrictions in the same way.

[Ketraar]

my station manager will sell wares to my ships only, but my ships will in turn sell those wares to any faction's station.

If you mean Autotraders then yes its how it was explained. They are from your faction so they are allowed to buy at your station, they then dont have sell restrictions and so will sell to anyone. The assigned subordinates of the station though should only sell to things you own.

MFG

Ketraar