[BONUS Plugin] Commodity Logistics Software MK1 04-8-05

[Karianor]

Hi!
I'm tryin to establish loop SPP -> Silicon Mine, Crystal Fab and Cattle Ranch

1. My TL is docked with SPP (its home base)
1b. I select SPP - key "r" then choose factory from list - 'n' - owned ships .. choose correct TL
2. Additional commans of TL -> Slot 1 -> Commodity Logistic: Add/REmove Base
-- note : here I've found, that home base has to be selected as the last one, that was my main proble yesterday --
2.1 select base Silicon Mine, Crystal Fab, cattle Ranch and finally SPP (Home base) in this order

3. I've got message, where pilot accepts command and supplier[1] is SPP and Consumers[3] are stations mentioned above

4. Then i select in commands of my TL Command -> Trade -> Start Commodity Logistic

5. I've got a message that my pilot has some cargo from previous flights whch is definitely not true, because I've bought my TL and send it directly to its home base
-> my problem is that SDS is set correctly, but the ship won't start flying

All the stations are close by in relatively small place, all in Herron's Nebula sector

My TL is Split Caiman, equiped with
Commodity Logistic Sft 1,
Spec. command soft. 1, flight com. soft. 1 and 2, trade com. soft 1 and 2,
navigation comm. soft. 1, duplex scanner, strafe drive ext., boost ext.,
S.E.T.A.
3x25MW shield, 1x G-IRE
best selling price locator and best buys locator are also installed

Thank you for your help

[Lethal Mitch]

Hi karianor,

Only thing I can think of that could be wrong here is the 1xGIRE gun. Have you installed the gun to the ship, or is it simply lying in the cargo bay of the ship? That would cause your problem as cargo other than the commodity to be transported is not allowed on board your ship.

You have gone a bit crazy with the upgrades on the ship as well as far as I can see but that wouldn't cause any probs apart from in your credit balance.

The equipment needed to operate CLS is

1. The Commodities Logistics software Mk1

2. Navigation Software Mk1

Extra/optional equipment that helps and adds extra function is

1. Trading system extension (so pilot can advance in level and therefore becomes more intelligent and can deliver from/to more suppliers/consumers)

2. Duplex and Triplex scanner (decreases minimum jump range by one sector)

3. Cargo scanner (affects collection strategy)

4. Jump drive (only needed if you want to use the ship over multiple sector)

The boost extension, strafe drive and S.E.T.A you have installed are of no use to the A.I pilots

Also the best buys locator and seller are of no use to the CLS pilot.

In my opinion the gun isn't a good idea, it makes the pilot turn and fight instead of getting away from danger and they usually always lose.

I trust in your post that you are referring to a TS ship and not a TL as you have typed

Hope this helps

[Burianek]

Yeah, the message about leftover cargo means you have something in your cargo bay that is a tradable ware (uninstalled guns are tradable wares).
Take care of that and you should be ok.
Cheers.

[Karianor]

Hi!
Thank you for your help. Actually, it was the third 25MW shield, which was the leftover cargo... Don't know why, almost all TS (not TL, thanks Mitch ) can have 3 x 25MW shields installed.

Thanks.

[Richpur]

This is probably me doing something dumb, but having installed the cls on a demeter with nav software (everything else is listed as optional) I set the home base to one of my SPPs, waited for it to get there, went into special commands and started it with a value of -1 so it uses the ones I've already got set.

But I don't have an "additional commands" menu to set the stations from.

[Lethal Mitch]

Hi Richpur,

I think you are just looking in the wrong place. Its not inside the special command menu, if thats where you are looking.

To find the additional commands menu just select the ships command console and look down the list in that view. I think its the third heading and it says additional ship commands and has slot 1 and slot 2 under it.

When you select slot 1 you will get another small menu where one of the options is add/remove station list or something very like that.

Hope that helps you

Mitch

[Richpur]

Oops.

Thanks, I was expecting another section like the combat/trade/special command menus...

Ah well, that'll teach me to read the whole screen.

Now... What to do with 12 spare Demeters...

[Butch Coolidge]

hi there.

i have used the cls script quite frequentlly since it was released and i really like it. thanks for the good work.

but now i have run into a strange problem:
i have a crystal fab in light of heart which i want to deliver crystals to a spp in unknown sector above getsu fune. so i put a teladi ts with a freight pilot and a jumpdrive in the crystal fab, told it to deliver to the spp and started it. the ts picks up all available crystals and 160 energy cells, which of course isn't even enough for the first jump (distance is ~22 sectors). then it flies to the adjacent sector aladna hill (w/o using the jumpdrive) where it docks at the terracorp quantum tube fab (!) staying idle for all eternity.

i've tried several times and it's always the same.
the crystal fab has more than enough energy cells and the ts has plenty of cargo space left after pickung up the crystals und e-cells. i set the station's maximum jumps to 50, so that shouldn't be the problem either....

can anyone explain why my pilot is doing this? and how i can fix it?
thanks.

[Burianek]

I really don't know.
My best guess is there's a khaak ship wandering around somewhere in aladna hill that is causing it to hide.
I actually didn't even know CLS ships would jump to deliver.

[Butch Coolidge]

thanks for your answer.
as soon as they get to rank courier cls ships can use an installed jumpdrive. they're even able to do a "gateless" jump too.

you're probably right about the wandering khaak ship, i forgot about that.
and i think i know why my little fella isn't using his jumpdrive:

i sent the same pilot with the same ship from my crystal fab in light of heart to a spp in family rhy (distance is ~10 sectors). as before the ts collects all available crystals and exactly 160 energy cells. but this time the 160 energy cells are enough to let him jump in at least one direction. so my ts jumps to family rhy delivering the crystals and having left only 50 e-cells. as he's not able to jump back to light of heart he flies to lucky planets (or an adjacent sector) normally where his 50 e-cells are enough to jump back the rest of the route.

is it possible that no matter how far the station to deliver to is away any transporter will take a maximum of 160 energy cells? i hope this isn't true.

[jlehtone]

Fuel reserve could be a percentage of the ships cargo hold. Not sure though.

The optional 2x and 3x scanners should decrease the 'minimum jump distance' whatever that is. Thus spoketh the readme. Implies jumping.

[Butch Coolidge]

thanks for your help.
it seems that a cls transporter can only take as much as 10% of its cargo space as fuel for the jumpdrive. so even a dolphin would only take 300 e-cells which still isn't enough for my purpose.

i installed both duplex and triplex scanners but i'm not sure what "minimum jump distance" is supposed to mean. but it obviously has nothing to do with the maximum jump distance or the amount of e-cells a ship will be able to take for its jumpdrive.

oh well, seems i have to build another crystal fab closer to the target spp.

[jlehtone]

Checked. The ECell reserve on ship is 10%, 20%, or 30% depending on the maintype of the ware. Since crystals are what they are, that cannot be helped. The 'minimum jump distance' is probably 2 or 1, since a flag is called JumpOneSector. That goes to basic library script call and is thus not specific to CLS. I would presume that both of these issues are clarified in the programming manual or other resource.

The CLS does have a long distance mode too. The M6 courier between two Docks. It is still less expensive to set up a double crystal loop with defence than to do that.

One more option pops up - the UT. An UT will gather crystals and deliver to highest bidder, even long distance. But they may go around tending other business too. And the crystal source is most likely bought empty by NPC traders. Bad profitsss.

[DjHol]

umm... sorry for asking, but where can I buy this software? do i need other softwares to be able to buy this software? do I have to be at the same sector with the ship or inside the ship to buy this software?

[jlehtone]

umm... sorry for asking, but where can I buy this software?

... the Paranid merchant fleet who now sell it ...

== Equipment Dock

[Lethal Mitch]

Just a reminder DjHol, you have installed the bonus pack?

You dont need to be in the ship to buy the software, I often send a peggy to buy the software for me when I am building.

[Thraxwhirl]

Hello.

Can you possibly help me?

I'm trying to get your Commodity Logistics script to work, but I am having no success.

I understand that I must first set a Homebase for the freight ship in question, and this must be the station from which it COLLECTS goods, yes?

Then I set a value of zero, so that it's a straight transportation with no fee(since I'm delivering solely of my own stations).

And finally, using the Additional Commands, I Add the stations I want it to deliver TO, yes?

Well, I've done all this with two fraighters, and they are doing nothing at all.

One of them just sits there doing nothing, with "Commodity Logistics on Standby" in it's Command list, while the other accepts the command, says it's on Standby for a few seconds, and then reverts to "None" every time.

Can you please help me?

Thanks.

Adam.

[Lethal Mitch]

Hi Thraxwhirl,

Trying to think what you have wrong here.

The only thing I can think of is are the ships in question empty?

They mustn't have any cargo in them except the cargo they are going to deliver.

Can you query them and see what they say?

To do that just go to add/remove stations in their commands and choose their homebase and it should write a list to your log.

Are the stations you want them to deliver to in the same sector and if not does the jump radius of their homebase allow them to go the required distance?

Can't think what else it could be.

[Thraxwhirl]

Hello, Mitch. Thanks for the swift reply.

In order to narrow down the problem, I'll address the possibilities one at a time.

Firstly, all my factories are in the same sector, so jumping shouldn't be an issue I believe.

Secondly, yes, it transpired that, initially at least, I was trying to use a freighter that already had some cargo aboard. As it happens I discovered that myself last night, and unloaded the stuff from it. You see, some of my freight ships were bought when I was new to the game, and I loaded them up with the wrong type of shields(it was before I found a very useful FAQ online which told me which ships can use what equipment, and I hadn't got around to unloading some unwanted 1MW shields from them - the vessels were too busy sector trading). But, after removing the unwanted shields from the cargo bays, and after checking that the ships were entirely empty, the problem was still there. The vessels would EITHER fail to retain the command and revert to "None" OR simply wait at the station("Commodity Logistics on Standby") and never go into space.

So may I ask, do I need to load the cargo bay manually? I was under the impression that CLS did this automatically, no? Or does it need to be loaded up by me for the first time? Or every time? Or does the pilots' experience come into play there?

Thirdly...

To do that just go to add/remove stations in their commands and choose their homebase and it should write a list to your log.

Now this tricky. I don't know how to see WHICH stations the ships have listed in their log. There's an "Add/Remove" command, but that doesn't show a list. I don't know how to check what's already listed, and it's sometimes hard to tell(when I select a new station) whether I'm adding or removing. Is there a way to view a list of stations already selected for the given vessel?

On a side note, might I humbly request that perhaps the script be modified at some future date, so that "Add" and "Remove" were made seperate commands in the list? This way you'd never run the risk of removing a station from the log of the ship in question.

Just a thought for the future, that. I reckon it would remove some confusion.

Finally, when I set up my CLS for a ship, do I need to Add its Homebase to the list? Perhaps this is my mistake, but I was under the impression that after selecting "0"(for transporting freight without charge) I only had to list the stations it will deliver to, and NOT the station it's supplying FROM - ie. its Homebase.

Do I need to put in the Homebase as well?

Anyway, thanks for your quick reply. I HOPE that you'll be able to clarify these points for me. It may help to narrow down the problem.

Meantime, I'll play around with it a bit more. I'll try adding the Homebase to the list, and also I'll try manually loading the cargo to be transported, and see if those measures help.

I'll get back to you with my findings.

Many thanks for your help thus far.

Adam.

Update: Well, I tried it with adding the Homebases to the two ships' lists, and also by loading the cargo bays manually. Sadly it still didn't work.

The ship at my Silicon Mine simply returned the cargo to the Mine imediately. ie. I loaded it, and it then just unloaded it back instantly within a few seconds, and never left the station.

The one at my Cattle Ranch, intended to deliver to the Cahoona Bakery, made one delivery after a manual loading. It then returned, I loaded it up again, and then it just sat there("CLS on Standby") and didn't take off and attempt to make a second delivery.

I don't know what I'm doing wrong. BOTH ships have their suppliers AND consumers logged(I found out where that's shown BTW), and BOTH have been manually loaded. Yet they won't go anywhere or do anything... and the one at the Sillicon Mine won't even accept its cargo, it just puts it back on the market immediately.

Update 2: Well, I tried it again with the one at the Silicon Mine. I set its command to NONE and then reiterated the CLS command and re-generated its list of stations(Homebase Silicon Mine and Consumer Crystal FAB). This time around won't accept the CLS command, it just reverts to NONE after a few seconds or so of "CLS on Standby".

Also, it may be worth mentioning that any failed attempt to CLS resets the ships' pilots' rank to Apprentice. All my freight pilots had ranks of at least Assistant Courier before I started trying to factory manage. They are now all Apprentices, and this demotion happened, one by one, every time I tried to set up a CLS unsuccessfully.

[Lethal Mitch]

Hi Thraxwhirl,

Let's see if we can sort this out for you. It's very frustrating when things don't go to plan like this.

1. Your factories all being in the same sector makes the jumping not an issue as you say.

2. No cargo is allowed in the ships other than the cargo they will deliver when you set CLS. Now not an issue with you as you have fixed that. Anyways they do send you a message if they have cargo, asking what you want them to do.

3. Now this is where your problem lies I'm sure. Let me just list what you should do as it is a bit tricky and has to be done correctly. Sometimes its a good idea to have a piece of paper with your intentions written down beside you and tick them off as you do them. So easy to get lost. So I will just list what I do. I will use an example where you have a Solar Power Plant and 3 Flower farms to supply energy to.

Firstly set the freighters homebase through the command console i.e your factory that supplys energy, your Solar plant.

Secondly go into the ships command console again and go to Add/Remove stations and it will bring up the list of factories in that sector. Choose the Solar power plant in my example!!! ( Yes you must set the homebase in the list as well!!!).

Thirdly, go through the process of adding each station you want the freighter to supply to. In my example each flower farm.

Fourthly, go back to the ships command console and start the CLS where you will be prompted for the price you want it to transfer for. In your case you said you want to put 0 as you don't want him to charge. You should then be greeted with "Command accepted" and all will be fine.

You don't need to fill the ship with its starting cargo, it will work it out itself. The logic behind adding all the stations including the homebase in the list is that the CLS trader will look at all the factories in the list you have given and intelligently work out who is the supplier and who requires the resources.

Later on if you want to query a CLS trader, whether to see what hes doing or find out his experience, you go to its command console and Add/Remove stations and choose the home base i.e the Solar plant in my example. Be careful not to choose any of the other factories in the list or they will be removed from his list. A log will them be written to your log book listing suppliers and consumers, transfer price and pilots experience.

I wouldn't think that the script will be updated anymore. Everyone is concentrating on X3 now it appears so I wouldn't hold my breath on that one.

Remember that the trader will go to standby if the factory supplying the resource has enough for him to transport. He won't move unless there is enough to fill a certain amount of his cargobay. I can't remember the percentage though I think its 20%. The consumer factory has also to be in need of the resource which I think is less than 80% in stock.

I have read your update and can't think what else could be wrong. The pilots do disappear I think after a while when set to none.

Maybe something hasn't installed properly with the bonus pack and maybe you should just install it again over the top and see.

Your not running any other scripts by any chance are you? i.e any unsigned scripts.

Hope this helps. If not post away, somebody here will spot something I'm sure.

Mitch