Does anybody understand station subordinate trader behaviour?

[RegisterMe]

I have a Smart Chip Fab in Trinity Sanctum III. It has a dedicated subordinate trader. It has been happily selling Smart Chips since I set it up. Until now. There's still about 120k demand for Smart Chips in Trinity Sanctum III at a price of 137. The station has about 2.5k Smart Chips in storage / for sale. But the trader is sat there doing nothing, with no order icons and what you'd expect to see in terms of "default behaviour = auto-trade for..". I removed its assignment to the station and put it back again - no change in behaviour.

Why isn't it selling product?
Is there a way to interrogate it to find out what it's doing, what it thinks it should be doing, and why?

[radcapricorn]

First thing I'd do is check its cargo hold, sometimes they dumb out, are left with full bay with no orders, and aren't smart enough to sell that.

[RegisterMe]

Cargo hold is empty. Station is set to auto price (and is currently 135 so 2 below the local price offered), and "Restrict Trade with other Factions" is checked, which I believe prevents race traders from buying product from the station.

The pilot of the trader hasn't changed, and the manager of the station hasn't changed.

[arragon0815]

For the next update is worked on the economy

Rest assured that this release is just part of our ongoing program of fixes and features, and that the focus of our next update will be on improvements to the in-game economy.

so we will have to wait a bit longer…

[Falcrack]

"Restrict Trade with other Factions" is checked, which I believe prevents race traders from buying product from the station.

I thought that option was meant to prevent both NPC traders and your own traders from buying or selling this item with NPCs. That is, NPCs won't visit your station to buy it, and your own freighters won't sell it, except to your own stations. But perhaps I am mistaken.

[Imperial Good]

and "Restrict Trade with other Factions" is checked, which I believe prevents race traders from buying product from the station.

Restrict trade with other factions also prevents station subordinates from selling to NPC stations. Hence there is no Smart Chip demand available and hence why the station trader is sitting idle. Manually set the sale price to something high and then turn off the restrict trading flag.

There used to be a bug where station subordinates went rouge and acted as if they were working for another station. In this condition they could bypass the restrict trade flag and buy goods from your station for a NPC station or buy goods from a NPC station for your station. They also would do a lot of stupid and unrelated trades not involving the assigned station such as trading between 2 NPC stations with some random ware or even randomly buying a full storage of illegal wares and waiting for the police to scan them. This was fixed in 2.50.

Independent auto traders (ships you assign to have the default order of auto trade) will ignore the restrict trade with other factions flag. They can buy wares from NPC stations for your station or wares from your station for NPC stations despite the flag. Either remove the ware from their trade list or use some imaginative black list usage to prevent this.

[RegisterMe]

@Imperial Good - thanks, I'll try that (though the meaning of this is.... unclear in game!).

I've noticed something else too. When I look at the map overview for Trinity Sanctum III for Smart Chip prices I see 137. However, when I look at the shipyard and wharf trade offers individually they are both at 130. It may be that the station manager is correctly obeying the price point he has, and it's just confusingly displayed at the trade map overview level.

[RegisterMe]

So I unchecked "Restrict trade with other factions" and five minutes later the trader started shipping 2k Smart Chips to the nearby wharf. I didn't see the price point on the station when it made the decision though so I don't know whether the trigger was the "Restrict" check or the price point .

Still, at least it is doing something now.

[radcapricorn]

I didn't see the price point on the station when it made the decision though so I don't know whether the trigger was the "Restrict" check or the price point .

Shouldn't the price it sold at be in the log? It wouldn't necessarily be the same as it was when it started going there, but at least should provide some information.

[RegisterMe]

One third point - the Smart Chip station is set to automatic pricing, and currently has a sell price of 136. The trader is now selling to the wharf again at 130.

I think the logic is working as designed, but three things combined to cause my confusion, and contributed to my inability to determine what was going on:-

1. Lack of clarity over what "Restrict with other factions" actually means in terms of behaviour of both the station, its subordinates, and any potential race traders.
2. Misleading high level price information on the map trade overview (ie delta between the 137 displayed and the actual buy price of 130 offered by the wharf and the shipyard).
3. Delta between the smart chip station's automate sell price (136) and the actual buy price offered by the wharf (130).

I'm still not completely clear on point 3 above.

[RegisterMe]

Shouldn't the price it sold at be in the log? It wouldn't necessarily be the same as it was when it started going there, but at least should provide some information.

If it is I can't find it. It would be great to a) be able to search the logs and b) look at a specific log associated with an individual entity (ie from the entity information menu) rather than having to rely on a single unsearchable global log.

Hopefully ego peeps will be reading this thread and learning a bit about the player experience .

[Imperial Good]

Shouldn't the price it sold at be in the log? It wouldn't necessarily be the same as it was when it started going there, but at least should provide some information.

It will be the price that it set off at since the reservation of a sale determines the price. At least as far as the game communicates.

[radcapricorn]

Yeah, I'm still not clear on that though it's mostly due to not caring enough. Seems like you do sometimes get small cashbacks after buys, not sure about sales.

[RegisterMe]

As long as sales aren't profitless I'm not too bothered about what are, in the scheme of things, rounding errors.

Not being able to work out what's going on, and why, bothers me a lot.

EDIT: Particularly if it starts to make me "distrust" the rest of the simulation.