Questions regarding Station Manager - answered, improvement in upcoming update (1.2)

[olsch]

Since this is my first post here, I want to start with thanking the team and adding my 2 cr. (skip the first line(s) if you like).
I really enjoy X3:FL and the new features it brings. Yes, even the Dynamic Relations, I was sceptical at first, I like it now. As long as you accept, that you can not be friends with everyone, it is no so difficult.
The Station Manager is a great replacement for the commercial agent from the Bonus Package.
The other additions also fit well into the X-Universe and add to the joy of the game (except for the Xenon-Spam).
Thank you for creating this!

Now to the Station Manager Questions:
1. Is there a threshold for buying equipment? I never saw a trader buy equipment, if the Station-Account was below 500k Cr.
2. Can I control, which quittieren will be bought? I have a trader for the BoFo Plant from the plot. As soon as my reputation with the borons was high enough, it went and bogt a jumpdrive from the research station. Now it has a jumpdrive and keeps 400 E-cells for nothing, since it only travels through The Void.
It would be great, if this could be ableistetet per station, like the sectors. An other possible situation: I could have adv. sat. in most sectors, so the TS would not need to buy a triplex scanner.
Or I don't want it to buy shields, since it doesn't matter, when the Q jumps into the system in front of my trader....
3. What is the full range of equipment? I saw him buy tunings, cargo extensions, shields, triplex scanners, jumpdrives. Would it also buy weapons?
4. Is there a way, to let the TS only fly to sectors with no known enemy ships? So he doesn't jump right into the arms of Xenons/Pirates.
Thanks!

EDIT: Corrected spelling mistakes (it was late...)

[Cycrow]

1. Yes, there is a threahold for upgrading, and its 500k, plus only 1 ship will get upgraded at a time if you have multiple in the station. This is to stop it from using all the money/ships to upgrade rather than keeping the factory running, which is the managers main objective
2. In 1.2 you will be able to setup restrictions for each of the upgrades if you prefer to only use some of them
3. Tunings (Engine/Cargo/Rudder), Scanner (Triplex or Duplex), Trading System Extension, Jumpdrive, shields and Fighter Drones
4. in 1.2 the station manager will use the satellite network you have setup, if its detecting any enemies, it will temporarily blacklist the sector. This obviously requires you to first setup the network

[olsch]

Thank you for the answer! This sounds great.
Looking forward to the update.

I also encountered a possible Bug.
A trader from a managed Station went into a Split system. While en rout my reputation with the Split dropt and he could not dock there anymore. He only was idle in the middle of the sector. Even after imporving my rep again, he still did nothing.
Tryed the follwing:
1. manually transfered E-Cells to TS, so it can jump away--> nothing happend.
2. Cleared the homebase, the manually jumping the ship away, resetting the homebase --> still nothing.
3. Setting the homebase to another managed station ---> now it is working again.
Then I treied to set the homebase back to the original, and it only idles again. (not even moving back to base)

[Snafu_X3]

1. manually transfered E-Cells to TS, so it can jump away--> nothing happend.

Expected (tho not intuitive): the ship was still under SM control & won't change tasks mid-flight unless a higher-priority task (eg being attacked) takes precedence

2. Cleared the homebase, the manually jumping the ship away, resetting the homebase --> still nothing.[...]
Then I treied to set the homebase back to the original, and it only idles again. (not even moving back to base)

Maybe the original homebase no longer needed those supplies (eg a random NPC dropped some off)? Don't forget there's an appreciable delay (up to 5min?) between SM ship task assignments & those ships actually starting to work (I guess due to automated task prioritisation in the wider, NPC/OOS universe)..

3. Setting the homebase to another managed station ---> now it is working again.

This would work because you're effectively resetting the SM ship command (rather than simply nullifying it as above): the ship instantly receives different orders & will start to act upon them, rather than waiting for its previous script to finish

At least, thats how I understand it..

[Cycrow]

When the station manager orders a ship to move but it gets stuck by a blacklist change after issuing the order the ship ends up getting stuck. As the station manager is waiting for it to arrive at its destination, which obviously won't happen.

You can stop the station manager which will release the ships, allowing you control of it again. Once its released the ships you can start it again

This should be improved in 1.2 as it will now recognise stuck ships and free them up.

Also you will be able to adjust some of the settings while managed like ignoring the blacklist, which will allow the ship to start moving again.

But there's also numerous improvements including the refueling logic so it'll be less likely to get stuck in the first place

[Klord]

When the station manager orders a ship to move but it gets stuck by a blacklist change after issuing the order the ship ends up getting stuck. As the station manager is waiting for it to arrive at its destination, which obviously won't happen.

You can stop the station manager which will release the ships, allowing you control of it again. Once its released the ships you can start it again

This should be improved in 1.2 as it will now recognise stuck ships and free them up.

Also you will be able to adjust some of the settings while managed like ignoring the blacklist, which will allow the ship to start moving again.

But there's also numerous improvements including the refueling logic so it'll be less likely to get stuck in the first place

Cycrow, some thoughts regarding SM.


At the moment, station manager only procures materials required to a single ship/item type in its production queue.

Example:
I have queued 3 Nova raiders in HQ. Station manager ships acquire all the necessary material required to produce 3 Nova raiders.
If I queue up a TOA to be built after the Nova ships, it wont start procurement process until the ships are built. In other word, the SM ships just idle till the production queue is over for Nova raiders to start acquiring material for TOAs.

This is counterproductive, specially if you have queued up multiple items which requires lots of material. If we can improve the duties to procure material for all the items in the production queue, it will be beneficial and save a lot of time. Please consider, thank you.

[Cycrow]

There will be several improvements to running them on the HQ including getting wares for the whole production queue and reserving them so it doesn't end up selling the wares it will need later

[Klord]

There will be several improvements to running them on the HQ including getting wares for the whole production queue and reserving them so it doesn't end up selling the wares it will need later

Perfect. Thanks a lot.

[Klord]

There will be several improvements to running them on the HQ including getting wares for the whole production queue and reserving them so it doesn't end up selling the wares it will need later

Cycrow, I have another query regarding the SM. I will explain it with an example, its easier that way.

I have my HQ in the unknown sector adjacent to Legends home. So its a dead end and only way to access it is through Legends home which is OTAS territory (unless I use the hub). Now the problem is, if Im in a bad relationship with OTAS, the SM ships dont work. Perhaps its due to Legends Home being automatically blacklisted. As soon as I get back to positive reputation with OTAS, ships start running errands. But this doesnt make much sense as all my SM ships are equipped with a JD. They can simply jump to the destination factory to buy stuff rather than flying through Legends home (which is what they do, but still they dont work if the OTAS rep are in negatives).

Since reputation swings happen all of a sudden, this is a bit of a hindrance. Appreciate if you can look in to the matter.

[Cycrow]

the issue you are describing is fixed in 1.2.

it usually happens if you have a ship assigned to the station without a jumpdrive, or it can happen when the ship doesn't have any energy when it plots a route
as when the station manager fails to find a safe route to the destination, it marks that sector temporarily off limits, so it doesn't have to keep plotting routes all the time.

so if you have a ship that cant jump or doesn't have enough energy, it'll end up marking all of those sectors.

this is how the station manager is able to navigate around the blacklist without tanking the performance

in 1.2 ships will correctly ignore the required energy amount, and the station manager will maintain 2 separate lists of no go areas, one for jumpdrive ships, and one for without