Station manager giving away wares

[Midnightknight]

Hello,

Another issue with station manager that seem to sell wares to your stations even if they have no money.
I tried to move my weapon complex and to achieve that you need to empty it from everything. I didn't understand at first why meatsteak cahoona was replenishing faster than i could empty it even when i set trade with other races to no and took all the money inside. I thought i was simply forgetting something.

But now, i just set up a PBC forge in a sector with no money inside as i just dropped it and i see my Athena from my food complex making trade runs to it again and again, filling it full of meat steak ... Now i start to understand why some of my complexs run out of money even if they are selling all their wares correctly, if they deliver wares to stations without money. It's also pretty boring when you are trying to empty some complex and you have it refilled again and again even when you want to stop any trade.

[Novvak]

I think it boils down to setting the prices and "status" (resource, product, tradeable, none) for all wares in both stations.
If the selling value for a ware in your complex A is set to let's say one credit below avg price, and in your complex B the buying price for that ware is at least average, the ships will consider complex B as a place they want to resupply.
It is unclear to me what is the overlap between advanced station settings and the Station Manager settings, I have been testing different options and arrived at satisfying setup after a while. Imo the fact that stations are supporting each other is a good thing, but I can understand it may be annoying when you want a station to cease production completely.
Try setting the resource prices in the station you want to stop to absolute minimum, it should no longer receive wares from AI or your own factories.
Another way to prevent emptying resources of a station for the sake of selling them or moving to your other factories is setting the minimum storage value to a high number. If you set it to the maximum allowed value, ships will never touch the resources in that factory and AI ships will be unable to buy them.

[Midnightknight]

I don't see what you mean, a station buy and sell even to your stations. When you want to distribute free goods over your stations that's call a trade distribution run, here they are using the sell and buy order and they should never sell to station with no money.

https://imgur.com/eZMmSU3

Of course a station i own should sell to another of my station is the price is set right, but they should sell or buy, else there is no point in setting different account on each stations and simply set them all to the global one like in AP.
Here it's filling full of wares a station that won't run any sooner cause i'm building a complex and for the success to work you need 20 stations linked together at once. So it won't be ready for a long time, but the manager will continue to put food it could sell to other stations in this one and eat all the profits of both my station and then my account when i'll need to put back money for it to continue working. That really looks like a bug for me and if it's not one, then it's really a feature that would make me completely stop using this manager and would love to be warned about.

[Hwitvlf]

That is unexpected behavior, but I picture it being helpful more often than it being a problem. Does the manager in your Food Complex still distribute free food if you change the freighter's duty to 'trade' instead of 'auto' under manager restrictions?

I wonder if this only happens when your food complex can't sell its stock to NPC stations, or if empty player stations are given precedence over trading.

[Midnightknight]

Haven't changed anything. But it was to be expected, when i switch to something else than Auto i only have the option for "Trade" so i guess it's always as trade anyway.

[Hwitvlf]

I was thinking that "Auto" might include a hidden ware distribution function in addition to trading.

[Novvak]

Trade definitely includes ware distribution between your owned station.
Not sure if this happens when the stations are not deliberately set under the "Supply Station" menu.

[Midnightknight]

I have not defined any supplier to this station as i am the only one selling Cahoona in Paranid sectors.