nOOb question, re: Station Manager

[akeelah]

Like many here, I'm returning to X3 (in this case, FL) after a some time away. Anxious to try some of the new FL features, I've hired a Station Manager in the early game to manage the plot-related BoFu Chem Lab in The Void gamma. It's close to three NPC fabs that use BoFu as a primary resource, so in-sector demand is high.

There was a single Dolphin home-based to the station when the SM was hired and yes, it has Nav Mk I installed. I set no restrictions; the defaults all seem fine for such a simple scenario.

After a short while, the Manger dutifully sends the Dolphin off to buy the required ECs and Bo Gas, happily spending my money like my children. The station is now full up with BoFu AND resources, but low on funds. I'm not inclined to provide any more until he does what he was hired to do.

The selling price is set 325, a bit above average. Seems pretty reasonable considering the three fabs in sector have been running out of BoFu entirely and regularly offering just shy of the max price (394).

But the TS has yet to make even one sales run. At the moment he's hours into his smoke break with no hint of moving any BoFu at any price.

The station was doing reasonably well when I was handling it manually, but I shouldn't have to. This should be pretty basic -- fire and forget, right?

Suggestions?

[BrigandPhantos77]

Double check your settings, make sure the sell range includes the supplied factories, make sure the dolphin isn't sitting there in an offloading mode, trying to load them onto your factory. Might need 2 TS to get working. There should be 2 TS floating free in The Void that you can use.

Double check the buy prices are higher than your selling price.

If all else fails, try stopping / restarting station manager. Or activate the TS to sell ware for best price. Though the Manager will likely override it and take control away from you.

You can set a min and max for the station's credit account. Go above, gives to you, go below, takes from you. So you don't have to ever worry about transferring funds. Lately I've been shutting this off. Got almost 11 billion in my player account.

Manager does use software installed on the ships. Trade Command Software for buy and sell for best price, special command software for collecting floating loot wares that it can use, etc...
I notice the manager works a lot better though for me when my station has more than 1 ship. It'll dedicate 1 to buying and 1 to selling.

Cheers!

[akeelah]

Thanks for the reply, and sorry for the delayed response. I tried all of the above without success.

In a fit of impatience, I finally scripted the station out of the game and scripted in a replacement. After restoring the inventory levels and Homebasing the Dolphin there, I started and configured the Station Manager with the same settings. It's been working perfectly ever since. I still have no idea what was wrong. But at least the brute force solution worked this time. On to other things…