How can I make my transporter deliver Energy Cells to another one of my stations?

[Nexuscrawler]

I have two stations and would like the product of one station (Energy Cells) to be delivered to the other station (Water Production).


Energy Cell Station

- Has more than enough Energy Cells
- Trade with other Factions is OFF
- Automatic price finding is ON (Sells Energy Cells for 10 Cr)
- Has a Merkur assigned as trader
- Has a Manager
- Has 3 million Credits


Water Production Station

- Trade with other Factions for Energy Cells is OFF
- Automatic price finding is ON (Buys Energy Cells for 16 Cr)
- Does have a buy order (currently wants ~30k Energy Cells)
- Has a Manager
- Has 3 million Credits


I believe I have done everything right. The Energy Cell Station should sell Energy Cells only to myself and the Water Production Station is accepting Energy Cells only from myself. The Water Production Station has a buy order for Energy Cells that is higher than the Energy Cell Station is selling for. Yet the Merkur Transporter assigned to the Energy Cell Station just sits there and does not start to deliver any Energy Cells to the Water Production Station. What am I doing wrong?

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Ultimately, there is little or no value in doing what you have done.

The trade-with-other-factions FLAG is more to do with allowing/preventing NPC traders from docking at your stations rather than preventing allocated station traders from trading with other factions.

10 Cr is not the absolute minimum universe price for Energy Cells - 9 Cr is (after discounts). 10 Cr is just the minimum list price.

I agree that adding a preferred supplier list would be a nice feature to have but on the most part it is unnecessary in X4 given the modular nature of stations - you can build a closed loop complex.

[Nexuscrawler]

- you can build a closed loop complex.

It sounds more like I HAVE TO build a closed loop complex, there is no other choice if supply chains don't work.
Doesn't seem like there is another way to make this work other than a mega structure that does everything.

I'd appreciate if there was another way though.

[burger1]

An autotrader might work. Set it to energy cells only and maybe just sector range? My autotraders sell to my factories so maybe they will buy from them also? Factory traders seem gimped. In the 2.5 patch you can blacklist factions maybe it can be done on a trader by trader basis in which case blacklisting all factions for that trader might force it to trade for just you.

[Nexuscrawler]

I have figured it out. This seems to be a bug.

For wares that you are buying, checking the "restrict trade with other factions" box seems to also include the player faction. So you are not getting any wares at all.
For wares that you sell, this does not seem to be the case and work correctly.

What that means is, that you have to check that box ONLY at the stations you are exporting from and make sure it's NOT checked on the stations you are importing at.
I am not sure if this is the actual cause of the problem, but allowing the station to buy wares from "other factions" makes the player ships sell to them.



EDIT:

I have no clue what is happening now, but the actual Energy Cell Station (not a ship) is now listed in the list of incoming traders.



It was at delivering 30.000 Energy Cells and is now at 15.235 Energy Cells and the storage of my Water Production Station is slowly filling up.
Is that mass traffic? What is happening here? I have no visual mass traffic between the two stations at least.


EDIT 2:

Station is now gone from the list and my Energy Cell storage is full. I am so confused.

[martimus]

You shouldn't need to set prices, but you might need to give the receiving station a hauler. I have 3 systems with full production chains, and none of the stations in any of those systems has any problem buying energy cells from my factories. Maybe part a picture of the Logical Overview and we can see if there are any obvious issues with your setup.

I will ask some more obvious questions though, just in case. Do each of the stations have managers? Do each of the haulers have pilots? How far apart are the stations?

[Nexuscrawler]

You shouldn't need to set prices, but you might need to give the receiving station a hauler. Do each of the stations have managers? Do each of the haulers have pilots? How far apart are the stations?

I had tried your first suggestion some time ago already. It didn't matter if the hauler was a subordinate of the seller or buyer station. He didn't move to buy Energy Cells.
All stations have managers.
All haulers have pilots... I don't even think you can buy them without one. A pilot is required.
The stations are about 50km apart.

[martimus]

The only time my stations don't buy what they need is when they don't have enough credits to do so. They might not do it right away though.

[Sao t'Lp]

[...]
It was at delivering 30.000 Energy Cells and is now at 15.235 Energy Cells and the storage of my Water Production Station is slowly filling up.
Is that mass traffic? What is happening here? I have no visual mass traffic between the two stations at least.
[...]

Maybe they use cargo drones? I read in this thread that in some cases station to station trading is possible using cargo drones.

[Imperial Good]

Quite a bit of misinformation in this thread...

The trade-with-other-factions FLAG is more to do with allowing/preventing NPC traders from docking at your stations rather than preventing allocated station traders from trading with other factions.

The flag does the following...

• Prevents NPC traders from both buying and selling wares with the station.
• Prevents subordinate traders from both buying and selling with NPC stations.

The flag will not do the following...

• Prevent player owned ships explicitly assigned the Auto Trade default order by the player from using the station as a source to buy and sell. These wares can either come from NPC stations or be sold to NPC stations ignoring the flag.

In 2.50 a bug will be fixed that caused station trade subordinates to operate incorrectly and start buying and selling wares in a seemingly random way. The exact cause was not disclosed but from my understanding the traders would forget who they were working for and start to act as if they were NPC free traders or trade subordinate of another station. This is likely why people think the flag does not stop trade subordinates from interacting with NPC stations because ships effected by the bug ignored the flag as they were trying to do something else. This was also the cause for partial station trades, eg buying and selling 90 units between stations when at the time the deal was made the selling, buying and transport amount would have allowed for more.

10 Cr is not the absolute minimum universe price for Energy Cells - 9 Cr is (after discounts). 10 Cr is just the minimum list price.

The minimum price before discounts is 10. However with discounts and from an NPC station it can get substantially lower. For example with 30 faction reputation it is 6.96 credits or close to a 30% discount over minimum value. If one gets a storage discount at the actual station it can be lower still.

I agree that adding a preferred supplier list would be a nice feature to have but on the most part it is unnecessary in X4 given the modular nature of stations - you can build a closed loop complex.

Closed loop complexes take impossibly long to build. I am still working on building up a closed loop warf/shipyard, the same station I started when 2.00 launched. It is still not even close to self sufficient. Sure one could SETA, but even then one would need to leave the game running over many days to finish construction.

It sounds more like I HAVE TO build a closed loop complex, there is no other choice if supply chains don't work.
Doesn't seem like there is another way to make this work other than a mega structure that does everything.

I'd appreciate if there was another way though.

It should work in 2.50 when it is released. As mentioned above there are bugs which cause station traders to not work properly.

For wares that you are buying, checking the "restrict trade with other factions" box seems to also include the player faction. So you are not getting any wares at all.

It will still identify your stations as a valid target to buy from.

I have no clue what is happening now, but the actual Energy Cell Station (not a ship) is now listed in the list of incoming traders.

It was at delivering 30.000 Energy Cells and is now at 15.235 Energy Cells and the storage of my Water Production Station is slowly filling up.
Is that mass traffic? What is happening here? I have no visual mass traffic between the two stations at least.

Yes that is cargo drones delivering the wares via mass traffic. This happens between two stations when they are in the same zone. It also can happen between stations and their build storage, but not the build storage of other stations. It also requires sufficient cargo drones.

You shouldn't need to set prices, but you might need to give the receiving station a hauler. I have 3 systems with full production chains, and none of the stations in any of those systems has any problem buying energy cells from my factories. Maybe part a picture of the Logical Overview and we can see if there are any obvious issues with your setup.

One should always set the prices. This is to avoid morale loss with the station managers in over supply situations. Additionally for wares in demand it is to keep the ware value artificially high (selling) or low (buying) for maximum profits.

In any case my suggestion is to set Energy Cells sale price to at least 13, if not even 16. Then set the other station buying price to at most 19. This keeps both within average sale price bracket for experience so all parties (both stations and their traders) will earn average experience reward. If one does the extreme and min-maxes the sell and buy price then both stations will earn bad experience and both traders will earn good experience. Bad experience lowers morale and hence why one wants to avoid it as morale is the slowest manager stat to grow.

[AlbinoNoodle]

I too would like exactly the ability you are asking for. there used to be a mod called station courier for tc where you would
specify a ship, a ware to haul, a start and end station and it would just repeat forever without getting distracted or having
to exchange money between your own stations.

It baffles me that a game about building a space empire lacks the most basic of logistical options but here we are.

[Nexuscrawler]

...

Thank you for this detailed explanation, Imperial.
If this is just a bug after all and will be fixed after the 2.50 beta ends, things should be fine.

Regarding cargo drones delivering wares between stations in the same zone... I remember that in X Rebirth there was a key shortcut to show the actual zone borders.
Do you know if there is an option to show the borders of the current zone in X4?
It would really help with logistics if I know that I don't need to set up traders between specific stations as long as they have enough cargo drones.

I'd still wish for a solution where you can tell your trader to explicitly trade with only your stations while still allowing NPCs to buy and sell stuff too.
Maybe that'll be a thing eventually.

[mr.WHO]

I don't know if this would help, but if you put stations close enough and put enough cargo drones this will happen:
https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... t_feature/

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

10 Cr is not the absolute minimum universe price for Energy Cells - 9 Cr is (after discounts). 10 Cr is just the minimum list price.

The minimum price before discounts is 10. However with discounts and from an NPC station it can get substantially lower. For example with 30 faction reputation it is 6.96 credits or close to a 30% discount over minimum value. If one gets a storage discount at the actual station it can be lower still.

Not seen any EC prices lower than 9cr myself - but fundamentally whether the minimum effective NPC price is 9 Cr or 6 Cr it would still be cheaper to by from the NPC facilities than a separate player station.

I agree that adding a preferred supplier list would be a nice feature to have but on the most part it is unnecessary in X4 given the modular nature of stations - you can build a closed loop complex.

Closed loop complexes take impossibly long to build. I am still working on building up a closed loop warf/shipyard, the same station I started when 2.00 launched. It is still not even close to self sufficient. Sure one could SETA, but even then one would need to leave the game running over many days to finish construction.

Depends on the size of the loop and the end-product(s), in the case of the OP the impact should be minimal.

A self-sufficient shipyard does take a long-time to build but it is also a VERY complex structure. Building a totally self-sufficient shipyard makes little actual practical sense for numerous reasons - a good project to do for personal gratification perhaps but it is far from a good reason to claim that complexes take impossibly long to build. The most basic S/M/XL shipyard would take of the order of 2hrs to construct assuming a smooth supply of materials for construction of it. Compared with X2/X3 that is an insanely long period but that is besides the point - station construction in X2/X3 was near enough instant by comparison.

This is however moot in the context of the OP's example - from their opening post they were apparently building a water production facility in essence and integrating a Solar Power plant with it not only addresses their concern over supply chains but also makes perfect sense and would not take that long to build - they would only have to add the solar power plant module rather than have to build the power plant, storage, and docking modules which would take demonstrably longer to do.

In game progression terms, starting with a smaller station and adding to it over time actually should result in quicker progression on balance - we do not start off as multi-billionaires with the credits and resources to build mega-shipyards from day one.

[Nexuscrawler]

I don't know if this would help, but if you put stations close enough and put enough cargo drones this will happen:
https://www.reddit.com/r/X4Foundations/ ... t_feature/

Yes, but do the stations have to be - like multiple people say - in the same "zone" for this to work?
Meaning if you build stations close to each other, but they are in different zones, it won't work?
Or is it really just a matter of distance alone?

If it's just a matter of distance, one could even build midpoint stations only consisting of storage space and drones to expand the drone network.
This would be awesome.

This is however moot in the context of the OP's example - from their opening post they were apparently building a water production facility in essence and integrating a Solar Power plant with it not only addresses their concern over supply chains but also makes perfect sense and would not take that long to build - they would only have to add the solar power plant module rather than have to build the power plant, storage, and docking modules which would take demonstrably longer to do.

In game progression terms, starting with a smaller station and adding to it over time actually should result in quicker progression on balance - we do not start off as multi-billionaires with the credits and resources to build mega-shipyards from day one.

My goal is to expand on the stations and what I want to build after I get the Water Production working. I just needed a proof of concept first. It's not my endgoal in X4 to produce water.
I just like to have specialised stations and a supply network with ships. It looks and feels nice. I know it's less efficient, I just would rather not build hybrid stations if possible.

[Général Grievous]

Try this mod:
It allows you to exange all ressources you want between 2 stations you own.
I tested it. it is simple and efficient.
The only things it misses for me is the ability to deliver more than one station with one ship.

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations ... escription

Enjoy!

PS: It's like the CAG mod in X3 if you already used it.

[AlbinoNoodle]

Try this mod:
It allows you to exange all ressources you want between 2 stations you own.
I tested it. it is simple and efficient.
The only things it misses for me is the ability to deliver more than one station with one ship.

https://www.nexusmods.com/x4foundations ... escription

Enjoy!

PS: It's like the CAG mod in X3 if you already used it.

Dude, Thanks can't wait to try that out.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

This is however moot in the context of the OP's example - from their opening post they were apparently building a water production facility in essence and integrating a Solar Power plant with it not only addresses their concern over supply chains but also makes perfect sense and would not take that long to build - they would only have to add the solar power plant module rather than have to build the power plant, storage, and docking modules which would take demonstrably longer to do.

In game progression terms, starting with a smaller station and adding to it over time actually should result in quicker progression on balance - we do not start off as multi-billionaires with the credits and resources to build mega-shipyards from day one.

My goal is to expand on the stations and what I want to build after I get the Water Production working. I just needed a proof of concept first. It's not my endgoal in X4 to produce water.
I just like to have specialised stations and a supply network with ships. It looks and feels nice. I know it's less efficient, I just would rather not build hybrid stations if possible.

Integrating Energy supply with a Water production facility is one of the more logical complex combinations in X4.

Not building hybrid stations as you call them has not really made sense since complexes were properly introduced in X3. If you are expanding as you go along then complexes are really the way to go - building integrated supply chain complexes is a clear winner - and if you plan them appropriately they can look pretty neat, tidy, and logical.

Lets take an integrated food production facility as an example:

1. Solar Power Plant(s) - Add traders (E-Cells are free)
2. Water plant(s) - Add miners (Need ice)
3. Wheat Farm(s)
4. Spice Farm(s)
5. Meat Farm(s)
6. Argon Food Plant(s)

You can follow similar patterns for Paranid and Teladi foods (different intermediate factories but the same principles can apply). Such complexes need not be that large either and there is value in adding Medical Facilities and Habitation Modules too since the Habitation modules will increase production and the Medical Facilities typically use the same source factories and produce wares required by the Habitation modules.

Historically, mixed ware complexes could look an absolute mess but as of X4 the situation is somewhat different.