Questions about Autotrading

[Mittring]

I have some questions about autotrading, which I find very confusing and not at all as convenient or easy as it sounds.

1. First of all, what is the difference beteen the ‘Autotrade’ and ‘Autotrade - Galaxy’ options when you can set the same range of trading distance?
2. What is the difference between the ‘normal’ Autotrade orders and the one in Default Behavior, other than the annoying difference in configuring the Autotrade Default Behaviour (of selecting all tradewares instead of deselecting tradewares).
3. Does Autotrade take the trade possibilities for sales in consideration when purchasing tradewares? I have 5 M traders in my current game but at least once per hour I have to manually setup sell orders in order to ‘empty’ a full autotrader that somehow cannot do so itself and is ‘stuck’, even with common tradewares like energy cells. In practice it often means I simply drop it in space because manually setting up sell orders gets old really, really quickly. Besides the obvious loss of income ofc. This happens in all Autotrade modes, and with maximised trading distance, also with uncrewed and fully crewed ships, that makes no difference whatsoever.
4. Why does it take so long for autotraders to find new trades after completing the previous trade? It can take 5 minutes or more for a traders to find a new trade. This is already the case with only 5 autotraders, I’m afraid what this delay will be when I have 20 or 30 traders running around... My system specs exceed recommended specifications, so that should not be the cause of this inefficiency.
5. Does it make any difference in which system the autotrader is located when activating the Autotrade options (even when the trading distance is maximised)?
6. Is there a minimum or maximum quantity of tradewares that autotraders sell or buy and is there a way to set these quantities. This would alleviate the issue mentioned in point 3 as well. I would rather that my autotraders go around the galaxy selling 9000 energy cells in batches of 10 pieces per trade than having it just sit in space because a certain minimum threshold has not been reached yet.

[Zippo342]

I have some questions about autotrading, which I find very confusing and not at all as convenient or easy as it sounds.

1. First of all, what is the difference beteen the ‘Autotrade’ and ‘Autotrade - Galaxy’ options when you can set the same range of trading distance?
2. What is the difference between the ‘normal’ Autotrade orders and the one in Default Behavior, other than the annoying difference in configuring the Autotrade Default Behaviour (of selecting all tradewares instead of deselecting tradewares).
3. Does Autotrade take the trade possibilities for sales in consideration when purchasing tradewares? I have 5 M traders in my current game but at least once per hour I have to manually setup sell orders in order to ‘empty’ a full autotrader that somehow cannot do so itself and is ‘stuck’, even with common tradewares like energy cells. In practice it often means I simply drop it in space because manually setting up sell orders gets old really, really quickly. Besides the obvious loss of income ofc. This happens in all Autotrade modes, and with maximised trading distance, also with uncrewed and fully crewed ships, that makes no difference whatsoever.
4. Why does it take so long for autotraders to find new trades after completing the previous trade? It can take 5 minutes or more for a traders to find a new trade. This is already the case with only 5 autotraders, I’m afraid what this delay will be when I have 20 or 30 traders running around... My system specs exceed recommended specifications, so that should not be the cause of this inefficiency.
5. Does it make any difference in which system the autotrader is located when activating the Autotrade options (even when the trading distance is maximised)?
6. Is there a minimum or maximum quantity of tradewares that autotraders sell or buy and is there a way to set these quantities. This would alleviate the issue mentioned in point 3 as well. I would rather that my autotraders go around the galaxy selling 9000 energy cells in batches of 10 pieces per trade than having it just sit in space because a certain minimum threshold has not been reached yet.

1. Galaxy likely has no restriction on distances. Not sure other than that.

2. I'm not exactly sure on this one. Maybe the normal one is trade any where but only in this system, while the default order is as you said highly configurable. Do not take me as gospel on this as I'm just guessing too.

3. I do not think so. Consider that if it did, by the time it got to where it buys, the sale might not be available anymore. In one case, I had a trader that got stuck with a cargo hold full of hull parts because he bought hull parts and then couldn't find a sale. I believe the way it works is they will try to buy resources if they are below galactic average, and then try to sell them at the best station they can find. Still, I'd like some clarification on the actual algorithm they use.

4. I have no earthly idea. For some of my autotraders, they never found trades despite them having 3-4 stars in piloting. I watched them for hours just putzing about.

5. You want to activate them in a system where there is a lot of possibility for trade resources. One where there is a good demand for resources that are supplied nearby. This can be difficult at the moment due to how the economy gets stalled by lack of combat.

6. I do not think so. I've also seen them fail to buy up to maximum capacity when they could have. This leads me to believe that they might check to see if they can sell wares locally immediately before they buy, but I can't be sure.