[1.30 RC6] Managers still not doing obvious tasks

[Fenhris]

Hey, not sure this belong in this subject, but this is to me the single biggest issue with the game.

1.My foodstuff had filled up 2 of his 3 Rahanas (working on 3rd) with food, and just letting it sit there. Not delivering anywhere, just sitting. At the same time my other stations was requesting food, one of them needed 2x what one Rahanas was carrying.

I need my foodstuff to supply my stations with food, not try to think about how much money he can make on a sale. I would give the containers to my other stations, making them get the supplys from the foodstuff them selves, but as can be seen in "2", that wont work, as they then spent the money on other factions, rather than on my own.

2."Restrict Trade" only works for selling, only partially for buying. When set for bought recources, you will see no foreign factions dock at your station, however your ships may be sent out to foreign stations for purchase. I would obviously prefer my stations to buy from my own stations when they have plenty of recources. Maybe they are more expensive than foreign factions, but money will end up with my self.

All in all this makes it practically impossible to make money from stations. At least for me. I can make plenty of money on Capturing ships etc. etc., but not from owning stations. I honestly think I should be able to.

If the "restrict trade" would work fully when buying then all would be fine.

[geist4711]

i saw it similar to you in my game.
but also, when i wait longer i can see:
when your stations-buy-price goes up over 0%, for example 1%, than your selling-frighters will bring the ware to your station.
so it is by my food- and energy-stations.
when the price for the wares they needs goes up over 0% they bring the EZ and food --also all other thinks.

independently of that, It would be fine, for better configuration of the trade-menue, to make more, finer, config for the manager-configuration.

select the station-ships only to buy or sell and which ware the only have to buy or sell.
so i cuold be able to mange morer ships and select finer what they have to do

one only for space-weed-buying, one only for space-alk-buying, one only sell med-pak's, one only the narcoticas, and so on...

mfg
robert

[Scoob]

1.My foodstuff had filled up 2 of his 3 Rahanas (working on 3rd) with food, and just letting it sit there. Not delivering anywhere, just sitting. At the same time my other stations was requesting food, one of them needed 2x what one Rahanas was carrying.

My entire personal economy ground to a halt due to this. My ships working for various key resource stations of mine, so Energy, Water, Spices etc. just stopped selling stuff to my own stations as well as NPC's.

The plot URV forge has never actually worked properly, it just fills ships up with Interceptor MK1 Drones that no one wants. Why it loads a ware it cannot sell I don't know. However, my stations above DO have buyers for their wares - some rather desperate (my own factories) yet nothing is shifting. Obviously my own stations had plenty of money & showed demand in the Trade Screen, but something had stopped working.

This is the reason I started a Free-Roam game in v1.30 RC3 to see if things ran smoother with a restart.

Scoob.

[Daibow]

Exactly the same problem, all of my Energy, Food and Water station ships, are just sitting around "trading will Nill" while my whole economy is screaming for the products to be delivered, My Game is Free play, started at patch 1.2, and is not modded in any way.

[ezra-r]

I have a footstuffs factory too. Assigned one hermod. It was woring alright (I think) until I built a mega-tank farm. Now it only goes to buy spices even if the factory runs out of wheat and stays there forever.

[Fenhris]

I am not sure, but I think that managers are a little too concerned with prices. So if they, as a buyer, cant find a low enough price, they will not buy.

On the other hand, selling managers will not send their ships if they cant find a high enough price, thus your stations runs dry.

One very big help would be if your stations could be set in a way that they considdered transfers from one players station to another as... Well... Transfers. Setting the price between them to 0

The buying facility should then always considder the price low enough.
He should stick to always buy the players supply of recource, rather than put the money at a competeting station.
The selling station may not make much money, but in when selling to your own stations that really doesnt matter, as this is just transfering money from one station to another, and at some point, those money ending back up in your pocket.

Maybe an option to "Prioritise" player stations, where the selling manager will not sell to competeting factions unless there are no options to transfer to a pleyer station.

[space_cowboy01]

I to have this promblem with the manager of my O.L space fuel distillery telling the home based ship to trade with nill
also he is selling the space fuel to the A.I @ 0 cr from the station .
Even ships which are in my squad which have been give a trade order to buy from my space fuel distillery are getting the space fuel for free no money is being transferred to to managers acount

Things i have tryed to work around the problem

station was first built in distant fumme now rebuilt in forlone armery same problem ( ships trading with Nill )
New captain on ships working for the station and for my squad
Told the manager to work some where eles he had 0 CR in his acount when i told him to move. But when put the same manager back he over 3 million Cr
New manager on space fuel distillery station

[Fenhris]

I to have this promblem with the manager of my O.L space fuel distillery telling the home based ship to trade with nill
also he is selling the space fuel to the A.I @ 0 cr from the station .
Even ships which are in my squad which have been give a trade order to buy from my space fuel distillery are getting the space fuel for free no money is being transferred to to managers acount

Things i have tryed to work around the problem

station was first built in distant fumme now rebuilt in forlone armery same problem ( ships trading with Nill )
New captain on ships working for the station and for my squad
Told the manager to work some where eles he had 0 CR in his acount when i told him to move. But when put the same manager back he over 3 million Cr
New manager on space fuel distillery station

The Trading with Nil only means he is not doing anything. I guess the mecanic is that he is set for trade, but no specific trade has been assigned. So he trades with nil, in other words, do nothing. If the manager has money he will most likely be set to trade with someone, if the freighter is of a storage type the station needs.

[space_cowboy01]

There is 80.000 + space fuel in the station and a possible 200,000 space fuel needed at the all the NPc station that have the trade updates from. If I assign a ship to the manager to sell the space fuel I sill get the trade with nil with 80,000+ stock in the station.

also any A.I NPc ships that do come to the station (and they do come lots of them ) are not paying for the for the goods That they load on to there ship. no money transferred to the station manager account .

If I have a ship in my squad and give it a trade cmd to buy from the station it does not log the trade ( such a ship has bought X amount of space fuel for X amount of money. again no money transferred to the station manager account

this is a fresh install and I have verified the game cache in steam with No mods added and no xml editing

I will add a save for the Devs to test when I am asked by them to give more info

[space_cowboy01]

After 10+ hours of waiting the home based ships at the distillery that sell the space fuel to the A.I npc station has started to work.
The distillery had to make over 100,000 stock and a base price of -4 before the manager would tell the home based ships to sell .

As fenhris said I think that managers are a little too concerned with prices my manager wanted to make 20% profit on the goods he sells

[Leafcutter]

May I suggest that you also check the current station storage.

The container, bulk and Tesla tanks have maximums and I'm not sure if station managers are intelligent enough to proportionate the different wares.

eg, my URV station bulk storage was full up with ore, silicon etc from mining and had no room for cut crystals until I extended 'built' the stage 2 storage module and effectively increased bulk storage from 2.5M m3 to 4.5M m3.

Unfortunately, eventually the same thing will happen again I guess, and there is currently no way to flush wares into space to make room. The result will be a station that can't function without the a non 'save game' edit method.

Cheers
-LC-

[Fenhris]

May I suggest that you also check the current station storage.

The container, bulk and Tesla tanks have maximums and I'm not sure if station managers are intelligent enough to proportionate the different wares.

eg, my URV station bulk storage was full up with ore, silicon etc from mining and had no room for cut crystals until I extended 'built' the stage 2 storage module and effectively increased bulk storage from 2.5M m3 to 4.5M m3.

Unfortunately, eventually the same thing will happen again I guess, and there is currently no way to flush wares into space to make room. The result will be a station that can't function without the a non 'save game' edit method.

Cheers
-LC-

I dont think Spacecowboys problem was a storage problem, the end good was being produced well enough, station manager just didnt sell it for some reason.
I have had the problem with overstocking of some wares, but as I expanded the storage the problem went away. Not just for a short time, but seemed like it was permantly. Maybe he was calculating max storage of each ware based on his potential max storage. Who knows.

Anyways, in my new game I do not seem to have that problem at all, and this is even without the expanded storage.

I have an idea that maybe the ships assigned to the manager works MUCH more independently than one may think. They want the lowest price possible before buying from the station. And then I guess they simply sell to highest price possible. In other words, the captain is trying to make as much profit for him self, rather for his station, or what would be even better, for your empire.
This would also make some sense as they do not follow the "Faction Restriction" assigned to the manager.

If it was the manager having control over what the ship loaded he would most likely try and get his wares out at the higest possible price, and the ship would only sell to own faction, if that restriction was set that is.

I do not know this to be true, just saying it's an option

[space_cowboy01]

May be the managers skills set is important on how he buys and sells and how he uses the station storage. my manager was quite expensive

if you buy a manager for 60,000( you have got the village idiot ) who knows nothing
if you buy a manager for 200,000 +( you have a manager of god status ) and knows how to run the station and use all its storage to the max.

When it comes to station building I build from start to finish the whole thing in one go I load up the C.V ship and hit build .and never leave the sector when building because of the restart the stage bug again problem

[Scoob]

I noticed the other day that automatic (i.e the ONLY) pricing on my Energy Array is screwy and appears to be based on % stock rather than actual stock.

My single-module energy array was near full with over 100k ECells in stock, reported offer price was -7% I constructed the 2nd module - so now the station can store DOUBLE the amount of ECells and it produces twice as many per hour. Without the stock even changing yet (no production run complete) and the same 100k ECells in stock, my stations offer price is now +7%

So, my station just increased its pricing despite having the same stock level. Consider that ECell production is basically Free (secondary resource aside) and this is a little silly. Seems that station manager possibly saw things go from "Near 100% full, offer cheaper price" to "only half stock, demand higher price". Pricing should be more about what the local (based on Managers trading range) market can support surely?

Hope they both address managers pricing, or at least pop up WHY the manger offers this price (i.e. local demand HIGH, prices bumped etc.) and also allow us to influence pricing at our factories.

@space_cowboy01: I do wonder how much skill is actually a factor here. Is there really any evidence that the skill of any hired NPC makes them more/less effective? The ONLY thing I've noticed is Marine Officers / Captains giving dumber acknowledgements to orders if they are of low skill. Sadly Marine Officers still don't level up, don't think other stadd do either.

Scoob.

[wysiwyg]

According to the script that sets the NPC's hiring fee it's a random figure bounded by an upper and lower limit:

(Can't seem to embedd the code in spoiler tags so don't read it if you don't want to know....

Code: Select all

<do_if value="$HireFeeRange gt 0">
            <!-- 1/4 = skill based, 3/4 = random -->
            <set_value name="$fee" operation="add" exact="$actor.combinedskill * $HireFeeRange / (4 * 100)" />
            <set_value name="$fee" operation="add" min="0" max="$HireFeeRange * 3 / 4" />
          </do_if>

I guess it's done like this to prevent the player from deducing skill levels from hire fees, thus forcing the player to engage in the smalltalk game

[Scoob]

I find the skills of NPC's a little off personally.

Sure, it's fine for a spawned NPC to have their skill set calculated by several simulated dice rolls. However, the game should pick their final role based on these scores.

As it stands, I have Engineers that are "expert" Commanders and Defence Officers who'd be better off with a spanner repairing things. Seems somewhat odd.

Basically, I think the game should see how an NPC's dice roll scores them, then pop them into the best category career wise.

Hopefully we'll be seeing a lot more depth to this part of the game as development progresses.

Scoob.

[space_cowboy01]

I would like to think that all the NPC are not equal it would give the game better depth .egosoft did say some npc are better than others at doing certain task when the game was first released . If they are working as intended I could not say

But I do agree that the ships Engineers they do not work as intended they are broken