What's the best way to set up a station for refuelling your own ships? A couple of options occur to me but none of them seem ideal.
Energy Cells must be Tradeable or Product, otherwise your ships won't load up on them when they dock, but if you want to allow NPCs to sell to your station they will also buy, which isn't desirable. So the station must forbid NPC traders and be supplied by the player via station manager, however in this case surely the station manager will also sell the energy cells when there's profit to be made.
Am I missing something to easily set this up? I just want my ships to be allowed to refuel from a pool of energy cells that I don't otherwise want to be traded.
Refuelling station settings
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Re: Refuelling station settings
I've run into similar issues. Configurations depend on what other work is carried out at the station.
If it's just a dock dedicated to refueling ships, you might use a freighter with 'trade distribution run' to keep it stocked with e-cells.
Another option is to block NPC traders and set the e-cells to 'tradable' and max price. If you have universal traders, they'll buy e-cells cheap and keep the station stocked. You can also just set e-cells to average price and traders will rarely buy or sell from you unless there are no other energy sources nearby.
If the manager doesn't have to handle energy for other station functions, you can set e-cells as a blocked ware.
If it's just a dock dedicated to refueling ships, you might use a freighter with 'trade distribution run' to keep it stocked with e-cells.
Another option is to block NPC traders and set the e-cells to 'tradable' and max price. If you have universal traders, they'll buy e-cells cheap and keep the station stocked. You can also just set e-cells to average price and traders will rarely buy or sell from you unless there are no other energy sources nearby.
If the manager doesn't have to handle energy for other station functions, you can set e-cells as a blocked ware.