Station Manager not recognising Dolphin

[Wraith]

I have a Dolphin Tanker that I'm trying to use as a supply ship for my Hub but the Station Manager doesn't seem to recognise it as a viable option. It's equipped with Navigation Software Mk I along with several other bits of software (Special Cmd, Trading System Extension, Trading Mk I & II etc) and has it's homebase set to the Hub. When I start the Station Manager it doesn't add the orange "M" next to the ship to indicate it's being used by the manager and it just sits in the dock doing nothing. I will note that when opening up the Station Manager Restrictions option it does allow me to set restrictions for that ship, but no matter what settings I change it doesn't seem to do anything.

I have tried changing all of the settings that I can. I also tried it on different stations with the same result despite those stations having identically outfitted ships which were working with the Station Manager.

It's an unmodified game. Any ideas what I'm doing wrong?

[Cycrow]

The ship only becomes managed if its doing a task.

So the 'M' only appears when it has something to do

[Wraith]

Thanks for explaining that. It still doesn't explain why the station manager is not doing anything. I now have 3 stations/complexes where the SM is doing nothing. Each one has:
- One or more correctly equipped ships homebased there
- Auto-transferred cash (at least 50k each)
- Auto adjusted prices
- Station Manager selected with either no restrictions or only restrictions on selling products
- Energy cells as the only resource not produced in the complex
- Solar Power plants in easy reach

Each of these installations has no Energy cells on hand and the Station Manager is just absolutely refusing to send ships to buy any despite waiting for several in game hours. It is recognising the ships as I can't give them orders and if I go into the restrictions option they are listed but otherwise it seems to not think they exists as options to send out to buy supplies.

[Cycrow]

without seeing the current state of the game it would be impossible to tell.

if you have a save game i can take a look and see if there is some issue

[Wraith]

This seems to have fixed itself for all but one complex and I think the remaining one is because its a narcotics complex in Pirate space where I have a negative rep which seems to be making the transports too afraid to leave the hangar. What settings do I need to adjust to tell the transports that "actually, yes you can fly through pirate space so get moving and go fetch some supplies"?

[Cycrow]

That is the global blacklist that's blocking those sectors.
You can either adjust the blacklist settings (Empire Management > Global Blacklist)

Or you can tell the ship to ignore the blacklist from the ships command console.

Also if you have a satellite network setup then it could also be blocking sectors if it detects enemies.

You can disable this in the station manager restrictions menu

[Wraith]

That's fixed it all. Thanks Cycrow. Unfortunately it fixed it just in time for the transports to run into a massive Xenon fleet (2 K's, 4 Q's, 4 PX's, 2 P's and I don't know how many L/M/N's) but the weapon salvage I got from them did pay for several more transports so overall it was a win?!