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Hey all,

I have a Shipyard + Wharf combined in one Station. I initially run only exclusively Closed-Loop recipe items. However, when installing Timelines it added a bunch of other Blueprints to my game, which meant my station now demanded a variety of other wares too. Cluttered the UI up, but ok. I did NOT trade those extra wares. Dunno why the game unlocked BP's for things I've NOT researched yet - but that's a separate issue.

Moving forwards, I've added more Blueprints myself, some of which need non-Closed-Loop wares - namely the main guns on a Destroyer, and some other things.

With all storage set to automatic, it's demanding a lot of Shield Components, Turret Components etc. (only needed for "Frontier" modules that I DON'T use and didn't unlock) I produce these myself. It's also demanding a tiny amount of Scanning Arrays (70), Smart Chips (500) and Advanced Electronics (2,400). However, while I'm EMPTY of these wares so totally unable to build certain ships AT ALL, the Station-assigned traders are focusing entirely on other resources. I thought once they'd gotten a decent amount, they'd switch to buying the lower-volume (but still critical) stuff, but they have not.

Supplies of those high-volume items is running low - I'm producing it, but demand outstrips supply at the moment. This means that most of the Transporters assigned to the Shipyard/Wharf are IDLE, yet they simply will not buy Scanning Arrays, Smart Chips and Advanced Electronics, despite supply exceeding the demand ten fold.

ALL ships are configured 100% correctly, all stations too. Pricing is appropriate, trade offers for Buy and Sell exist, yet the game simply will not task a subordinate Trader to buy what's needed.

When expanding a station, the game often play around with the storage allocations. It had set Energy Cells to 1.5 Million, but since revised this to just over 800k - yet it still has 1.5 million in stock. I thought this might be making the game think there's not enough space, however, Station still has over 40% Container storage free. I'm currently selling off the excess EC's - it'll take a while - so we'll see if that helps. However, the game is still getting it wrong here. Check list:

- CRITICAL demand for ware.
- Low volume required.
- Plenty of space for ware.
- Trade rules 100% correct.
- Pricing within parameters.
- Valid trade offers meeting all criteria are present.

There's not valid reason why the station will not allocate IDLE and FREE traders to buy the critically needed resource. I set up Shipyards every game, not quite hit a stopper like this before.

I've manually loaded some of each missing ware on the station now, so I can build stuff. I'm just hoping it'll eventually be able to feed its self, it's set up correctly to do so. I might try setting some ships to buy nothing BUT those wares, see if that helps... Hmm, ships set to JUST trade Advanced Electronics, Scanning Arrays and Smart chips remain idle too. Currently ALL the station's traders are idle, but not one is saying it cannot find a trade... Let's see if the station wakes up on its own.

This is obviously a bug of some kind, I've set things up correctly. However, if someone is familiar with this issue, perhaps they also found a way to work around it?

Edit: I think the game gets very confused about how much storage it has available to it. Station had a total of 9 million container storage, of which under 5 million was used. However, it simply would not buy ANY of those low-volume wares. Period. As a test I added an additional 1 million container storage. Within moments of doing so, one of the ship bought a load of Advanced Electronics, hopefully other low-volume wares will follow.

What does this mean? Well, the game was acting like there was no storage at all. Wrong, there was plenty. Adding more storage helped, but it shouldn't. Assuming the game DID indeed incorrectly think it was out of storage, why would it load up on some wares, ignoring others that only take up like 1% of the total space? Odd, right?

Edit 2: Hmm, that ship did ONE run of Advanced Electronics, before ALL ships at the station "Failed" with "no matching trade offer found". WRONG, the trader offers are there, this error is spurious and NOT the reason for lack of trading. I have more storage being built and excess EC's being taken away, so we'll see if the game recovers further.

Tempted to update this game in progress to v7.1 Beta 5, as that reports to address some trade-related issues... I do have a separate save specifically for testing, and it doesn't exhibit this issue that I noticed.

Priorities are definitely a bit off sometimes. I've had stations that for instance begin bleeding crew because they're trying desperately to sell wares in very tiny amounts at a time and it keeps their traders too busy to do anything else. So they don't get the food and meds they need despite being able to source them easily. My preferred solution lately is to have a couple traders on each station *and* a hub station buying and selling my own wares internally *and* trade fleets doing distribute wares only to me (usually for ECs). That way if one station becomes hyperfixated there are always ships free of that station manager's concerns, operating for another station or doing their own thing. But if you don't make these things yourself it might be trickier.

Feels a bit like the AI needs to be taught futility. If you cannot meaningfully buy/sell the thing you desperately want to import/export... you might as well handle what can be done instead.

I've certainly had the Food and Meds issue back in v6.2. Station was OVER stocking some wares, filling up all available cargo space. Food and Meds were the wares missed as a results, so I lost many hours of Workforce accrual in a few minutes.

As a Shipyard only buys stuff in, it has no need to allow for produce too, which is why it's particular odd its having problems. It does seem to be a cargo space thing, not technically, but the GAME thinks there's a problem. Adding more storage is helping. However, it's crazy that adding ONE MILLION container storage, allowed the station to buy 257 Advance Electronics (just over 1/10th of the demand) before it acted like it was FULL again, will ALL traders failing. Darn weird.

I''d not usually do this, but I've transferred my save to the v7.1 Beta 5, to see if that makes a difference...