[Script] Station Manager v1.11 (March 27)

[Burianek]

looking into it. found something that might be the cause (although if it is, I think it's a problem with one of the script editor commands)

Let me try to phrase the logic a bit differently and see what happens.

Will release a new verison soon.

[Baleur]

I just read the post, and i loved every word of it, until i came to the "requires a satellite, ship, or station in a sector for the traders to see the prices in that sector" part.
Is it possible to remove that? Because if you use the original buy for best price etc, actually every single trading command in the game, the ships knows the prices of every sector at all times, which removes alot of micromanagement.
I understand the need for sector specialization, but for us "common" station/complex owners out there, we need a script exactly like this, but without any sector-activity demand for our traders to buy and sell.
Sigh, oh well back to the "manage station" script.

[giskard]

Baleur:

Yes satelites especially get destroyed far too frequently, youd be replacing them constantly. Probably at the expense of actually playing the game.

In some sectors it would simply be impossible to use this script give how hostile X3 is in 1.3.

Giskard

[AalaarDB]

It was a design choice to make things more realistic and balanced. How does a trader know the prices in a different sector without visiting that sector?
You'll still search most sectors. If you have 5 stations in 5 different sectors, with 2 ships each, that's a potential 16 sectors (including playership). You can lay satellites anywhere you want, if you wish. Either way, as your empire grows so does your trading range.

Edit: some other points that were brought up in chat:
Any satellite deployment script should be seperate from this one (they exist).
If a sector is too hostile for a satellite would a trader last any longer?

[Baleur]

I have another point for you, ive lost 10 satellites total in Siezewell, the teladi home sector. Its their home sector.. Surely the traders would want to check the core sectors for resources and profit opportunitisses?
Another point, if the traders only jump to a sector which you have current info on, there is absolutely NO danger at all, that if anything is to be considered more cheating than having them jump at the absolutely closest best price, and if there are pirates well then good luck, just try to escape. Like all the other traders apart from this script.

i dont wanna sound so harsh but its just that your script is precisely what i need, and it ticks me off that a tiny thing prevents it.
Can't you add an option about it in the individual traders? Or the station itself? The default could be "Only jump to active sectors: On"
The more options the better, makes more people excited about the script no matter if they agree or not on certain specific small aspects!

[Burianek]

I'll throw another negative in there for you:
traders don't jump using this software. at all.

I also have trading operations in and around seizewell, and I've never lost a sat there.

If you want to manually remove the player object / sat check, i'll tell you how to do it.

open the stat.mgr.trader.FindStation script:

find this line:

Code: Select all

071      if $size

highlight the word $size and change it so the line reads:

Code: Select all

071      if [TRUE]

Then it will search all sectors irregardless if you have a player object in them or not.

I think that's cheating, but you may feel free to disagree.

Cheers.

[Burianek]

Its common for me to see my traders docked at a station which has filled up on a resource while the trader was en route. The trader will just sit there doing nothing.

AalaarDB found the issue. It's been fixed and a new verison 1.08 uploaded. The new version will not sit stuck in a station it's trying to sell to.

Thanks for the bugrep, every little bit helps.
Let me know if this new version sorts it for you. (I'm 97% certain that it will)

Note: I changed the /t files in this version, so make sure you're installing the whole thing, not just the /scripts folder.

Cheers.

[danprivatus]

Well done, Guys! 1.07 is a fine piece of work -- no more freezes over many hours of play. And I'll get 1.08 to avoid the bug that I didn't even know existed.

I agree with no jump drive -- it's a "play balance" issue. You can't have EVERYTHING handed to you! IMO this script already saves you so much time and effort.

I also agree with the need for a satellite in a sector for the station trader to "see" the prices there. First, it just makes sense. Second, I actually lost a trader to a pirate ambush because the pirate sector was within the jump range (only two sectors) of the station, and my trader "saw" the great price there. Well, I don't care _how_ good the prices are, I don't want him going there. All I had to do to prevent that was knock off that satellite and not release any more in that sector.

Excellent work, guys -- keep it up!

[dwgh]

Probably wanting the moon on a stick, but how about an additional option to have currently inactive ships automatically drop nav sats in sectors within the jump range that are currently without one? There's a whole bunch of ways to do this, I leave it to better game balancers than me to pick one

You could potentially also include a "dont go into this system" as part of this (this can also have the effect of blocking systems beyong this one).

[Detritis Max]

I was just wondering, can I just copy the new ( 1.08 ) over my existing ( 1.07 ) version and leave it at that or do I have to stop and start everything again like I had to do when I upgraded from 1.03 to 1.07 (because of the path finding bug I kept getting).

Also I was under the impression the price checking occured when you had any item in a sector not just satellites

[AalaarDB]

Any satellite placer script will not be included with this script. It is better to keep them seperate. You may use a satellite placer script if you wish, and I think a few exist.

The 'don't go in this sector' feature is called 'AStar + no satellite'.

Price checks occur when any player owned ship or station is in the sector. Satellites are a type of ship, and they are often used because they are cheap, not because they are required.

No, you do not need to restart manually.

[Baleur]

Thank you, its all good that they dont actually jump, makes it more balanced with the other npc traders, which by the way knows every price in every sector
Just going for the most 100% npc <-> player trader balanced state, thanks

[Burianek]

Ok, version 1.08.02 released. Only a couple of minor fixes here.
There was a problem with pirate notoriety not being set correctly so the traders weren't avoiding pirate sectors as much as they should have. This has been fixed.
There were also a couple of small improvements made to the pathfinding algorithms.
Download links on the first page.
Cheers.

[Rakeris]

I was wondering if there is anyway to prevent the traders from going though Xenon sectors? Even though I don't have a sat in then, I usually have them in the sector after them, so the traders will sometimes try to go through the Xenon secotor to reach the one on the other side.

[AalaarDB]

I am going to update the post with the answer to that question, read it in a few minutes.

[Burianek]

Ok, I've added AalaarDB's description of the pathfinding algorithm to the first post in this thread.
It explains how you can change the numbers in the pathfinding script to set your tolerance for entering enemy sectors.


Other than this, how's everyone like the script so far? Any suggestions? (other than complexes which will come soon)

Oh, and let me take a brief moment to describe how complexes will work once support is added:

There is a toggle in your complex parameters menu that sets how you want to deal with intermediate products. You can set this toggle to one of three values:

• buy
  sell
  buy & sell

Station manager will look at this setting to decide how it wants to handle the int products for this complex (you can set up each complex differently). So if you have it set to buy, station traders will buy intermediate products. If you have it set to sell, they will sell them.

However, this script is not intended to be a 'mini-sector trader', it's only a station management script. (If we made it a sector trader, we'd have to charge a ton more for it, which I don't want to do). For this reason, if you have your parameter set to 'buy&sell' your station traders will ONLY BUY the ware. Setting the parameter to 'buy&sell' is no different than setting it to 'buy' (except for how npc traders will interact with your complex). It would be way to powerful and imbalanced to let your station traders buy and sell every int product in the complex, you'd make too much money. If you want to trade intermediate products, feel free to do so with the default 'buy ware best' & 'sell ware best' commands.

Any comments? Anyone have any further suggestions for the script?

Anyone have any traders get damaged and fly to repair docks? The fly routine that sends them to repair docks isn't the regular pathfinding algorithm right now, I'm curious as to whether you agreed with the repair dock they picked to fly to and how they got there.

[Rakeris]

I can't think of any really, exept for complexes but that will come in time as you said.

You two have done a great job so far, thanks for putting together such a great script! ^^

I do have a question though.

It would be way to powerful and imbalanced to let your station traders buy and sell every int product in the complex

Why would that be? Wouldn't it be the same as having multiple factories in the same sector, and have the prices set up so they will buy/sell to each other, and any other stations in their jump range?

[Burianek]

Yes, it would, and if you want to do it that way, you're more than welcome. That would take quite a few transports to do so however, which balances out the cost / reward quite nicely.

I may actually set up some of my sectors that way, because you're right, you can make more money that way trading more often with the NPCs. That's another one of those think aspects to the game though,

'How exactly do I want to set this area up? Do I want a complex or not? What are the trade offs? Hmmm, more efficient, and easier to manage with fewer traders to get attacked, but I sacrifice some profit potential ....'

[Rakeris]

True, true.

Yeah I tried to set up a large SP complex mines and all, but the thing I didn't like after setting it up was how I had so little control over all the intermediate products. So I ended up reloading and setting them up all separate, it only cost a few mill more in transports and I liked the set-up a lot better, as they will all buy from each other and sell to NPCs as well, depending weather or not my stations need resources.


Yeah I agree with you not putting it in the script as you could do the same thing with half as many transports, which would make it far cheaper and less risky, but you'd make more money.

[Burianek]

Ok, version 1.09 released.

Minor fix to a really annoying occurrence.

If a trader loads up and heads out to sell a ware, and then the price changes so he can't sell it anymore, he'll try to pick a new ware to trade. Oftentimes, this means buying another ware for the factory.

This is fine, but I was noticing that they weren't checking if they had free space left before running off to buy. So you'd get a situation where it would be completely full, trying to buy 1 more unit of energy or something before returning home.

I also had it so the traders wouldn't unload products when they got home. I kind of figured that you'd rather keep the wares on the ship in case you found an opportunity to sell them while you were out making the rounds. So a nightmare situation could occur where a trader had a full load of some product and was making shuttle runs trying to buy 1 or 2 units of energy each run for the station.

So anyway, I fixed a few things to make it behave better:

• - traders will no longer attempt to buy resources if they have less than 20% of their cargo bay empty.
  - traders will unload all of the wares (products and resources) whenever docking with their homebase.

This should make them behave a bit better in those rarely occuring circumstances.

Cheers.