Station Managers - Do they favor closer stations?

[Duncaroos]

I have an Solar Power Plant in Family Kritt (w/ 2-Star Manager), and is overflowing with Energy Cells (+200,000) and selling at cheapest price (10 Cr/unit). This station has 2x Boas (M-Trader) and 1x Tuatara (S-Trader). I have existing stations in Family Kritt (2x Refineries) and Family Zhin (1x Food/Medical, Graphene, Superfluid, and Hull Parts) that are producing well and have their storages are stocked with ECells and other items. No stations want ECells in Family Kritt, and the best buy price in Family Zhin for my stations is 420 ECells @ 13 Cr/unit.

I have a upcoming build for Microchips and Smart Chips Factory in Family Nhuut. S/M Dock, L-Storage, and Habitats (set to fill to max) are constructed to allow me to manually set manual buy orders for ECells, Silicon Wafers, and Habitat food/medical consumptions. I provided this new station a 2-Star Manager. On my map, this new station is requesting 5359 ECells @ 22 Cr/unit - the maximum of any station.

For the life of me the Solar Power Plant Manager will NOT set a sale with this new chip factor in Family Nhuut. It seems to prioritize stations closest to it even though the profit margin is less. I thought managers would pick the highest price for distribution? I checked all Blacklists are off for subordinates, including each individual ship for any overrides. The only restriction are the Trade Rules for Energy Cells - both stations are set to sell to my faction only. Solar Power Plant traders can jump up to 2-sectors to trade, which Family Nhutt is in range of Family Kritt (2 jumps)....what am I missing? Solar Power Plant needs 0 Cr for budget, and I gave chip fab 6,000,000 Cr for budget (station logistics menu recommends 5,282,000).

What am I missing? Do closer stations get a much higher weight than further stations?

I would love to provide a save, but it is modded (VRO, Fire&Smoke, Better Kill Credit, Change Equipmentmods, Satellite Service - none of these look to touch any AI behaviour for traders); I am just looking to discuss the vanilla behaviour and if managers do have other factors not associated with profit for sending a trader to sell.

[Duncaroos]

I just made a very simplistic blacklist to not allow activities in family Kritt; this Solar plant is still making new trades within Kritt, so I'm gonna pull out mods and test this. Seems similar to an issue I identified about travel blacklists previously

[TheDeliveryMan]

I just made a very simplistic blacklist to not allow activities in family Kritt; this Solar plant is still making new trades within Kritt, so I'm gonna pull out mods and test this. Seems similar to an issue I identified about travel blacklists previously

Maybe their home sector is automatically removed from the blacklist?

[Alan Phipps]

There's some dev advice here, and here and here.

[Duncaroos]

I just made a very simplistic blacklist to not allow activities in family Kritt; this Solar plant is still making new trades within Kritt, so I'm gonna pull out mods and test this. Seems similar to an issue I identified about travel blacklists previously

Maybe their home sector is automatically removed from the blacklist?

Must be. I guess it would make sense - you can't do a "buy activity" for an outbound sale if the blacklist restricted your sector.

[Duncaroos]

There's some dev advice here, and here and here.

Ok the last one is basically it. It will look at closest trades first, and if there's a "best price" in that sector it will do that. Stations then suck at pushing wares outside of this sector, and you have to pull the ware in instead. This has a profound issue on my manager's skill level - he was the first station in and even though always doing trades, traders are not full and profit is next to 0, so they are not gaining any skill over I'd say 30 In-game hours (stuck at 2 start management, 1 star morale). Other stations nearby built later are all near 5 star.

Would nice if maybe a time penalty was assigned to stations just serviced, or some kind of weighting added to adjust the final decision to trade further. To me, the max price should always be prioritized - that station is desperately needing wares over others that have lower prices. A manager that picks 1% profit over 100% profit is pretty bad

[Duncaroos]

Other options:
- Allow player to set min sell distance in the subordinate's settings to allow us to create short-haul or long-haul subordinates.
- Improve Trade Blacklist to split buy and sell behaviours differently. A toggle could be added to copy settings to mimic the current Trade Blacklist applying to both buy/sell activities. For Mining, see*


*Free miners really only care about Activity blacklists and Trade blacklists (selling only); station miners only care about Activity blacklists, as they only sell to their station. Don't think any impact to Miners would be a result of improving the breadth of the Trade Blacklist.

[GCU Grey Area]

From the sound of it all of your stations are set to automatic pricing. This is not necessarily the best setting in all circumstances. If that is the case would recommend setting a manual selling price at your solar power plant, such that it will ignore close trades that fall below this threshold & instead use it's ships to supply more distant stations. Nearby stations will still be supplied, but only when their stock level depletes to the point where it pushes their automatic prices above the selling price set at the SPP.

[rudi_pioneer]

Also possibility related - all my managers eventually level up to 5 stars except solar power plant ones. There was a forum post that explained why at some point.

[Duncaroos]

From the sound of it all of your stations are set to automatic pricing. This is not necessarily the best setting in all circumstances. If that is the case would recommend setting a manual selling price at your solar power plant, such that it will ignore close trades that fall below this threshold & instead use it's ships to supply more distant stations. Nearby stations will still be supplied, but only when their stock level depletes to the point where it pushes their automatic prices above the selling price set at the SPP.

That's a good point - I'll adjust to see improvement. This however is still a moot point - my manager should be looking at where they can make the most profit. I shouldn't have to set a manual price for the solar plant just because the manager favors same-sector stations too much for itty bitty tiny trades. I get it has to be simplified enough to not bog down the game with calculations, but surely a weight factor based on # of sector away can help with this (or per other suggestions I noted)

[Duncaroos]

Also possibility related - all my managers eventually level up to 5 stars except solar power plant ones. There was a forum post that explained why at some point.

My solar power plant in Tharka's Ravine (the one south of Heart of Acrimony II), is doing quite well but this station has no player stations around it nor traders assigned. This manager is a 3-star manager now with ok morale (I think either 2 to 3 star).

I'm ok with the manager's star being lower, but having a solar power plant fully ignore nearby player stations in other sectors is a drag.

Even build storages are not prioritized, so I have to constantly and manually create trades to go send ECells to the build storage

[zakaluka]

I have run into this problem before, and the most straightforward solution is to go back to automatic pricing. The price elasticity tends to edge out that local trade that your haulers were making partial deliveries to before. They won't return there until that local station's demand actually gets high.

But there's probably another reason you aren't using automatic prices. Maybe you started using manual prices to try to work around a different undesired result. If you could explain THAT problem, we might have a different solution than manual pricing.

[Imperial Good]

I found the best work around is to not sell at minimum price, and leave buy orders on automatic pricing.

All the nearby buy orders with low volume and low price will be ignored, allowing the subordinates to trade with further away stations wanting/paying more.

[Duncaroos]

I have run into this problem before, and the most straightforward solution is to go back to automatic pricing. The price elasticity tends to edge out that local trade that your haulers were making partial deliveries to before. They won't return there until that local station's demand actually gets high.

But there's probably another reason you aren't using automatic prices. Maybe you started using manual prices to try to work around a different undesired result. If you could explain THAT problem, we might have a different solution than manual pricing.

It's all automatic pricing. It's almost like I perfectly spaced the stations where as soon as the M-trader does a round trip to sell 270 ECells to the ore refinery - the ore refinery starts a new cycle and asks for 270 new ECells, so the Solar Plant prioritizes it as it is the best price for my faction in its closest space even if it is a low price (I think 10.8Cr/unit). Apparently, to my understanding of the last link provided by Alan, the code checks closest sectors first and moves out if there are no trades.

To me, if my understanding is correct, that is rather bad decision making by the code. If I can assume my station in Family Nhuut is 6x as far as the ore refinery, 6 x 270 x 11 Cr/Unit < 5359 * 22 Cr/unit ... Even considering 12x penalty for going to Family Nhuut from Family Kritt.....selling further away is still more profitable.

If I was a dev, I would look at total expected profit for all stations within range, weight* the profits inversely proportional to the # of sectors away, and choose the one with the highest profit. I don't think the penalty is necessary, but I get you have to somehow factor in distance, and calculating distance between stations may consume too much computational time (unless this path finding algorithm is very efficient).

* Weighted factor could be possibly:

• = 1 - 0.2 * Sectors Away = {1, 0.8, 0.6, 0.4, 0.2}
• = 1 / (Sectors Away + 1) = {1, 0.5, 0.33, 0.25, 0.20}
• = √[ 1 / (Sectors Away + 1) ] = {1, 0.71, 0.58, 0.5, 0.45}

First one is a bit more fair, but some sectors may have their cores much bigger than others. Second one greatly penalizes out of sector trades, but if profit is high may be worth it. Third one makes further sectors (3+) more similar in weights - if you're going out that far, your trader is gonna take a while anyways so may as well make the most profit if you do have to go way out from the station.

[Duncaroos]

I found the best work around is to not sell at minimum price, and leave buy orders on automatic pricing.

All the nearby buy orders with low volume and low price will be ignored, allowing the subordinates to trade with further away stations wanting/paying more.

I too have had good experience with auto pricing. I don't recall this happening in past games pre-7.0; but I was making all-in-one stations so likely just never noticed this quirk before. Maybe I have too few traders at the solar plant, or I have to create some free ECell traders set to Fill Shortages and only have them trade with my stations.

[zakaluka]

Sorry I missed some context on your thread. I thought you were on manual pricing because I saw you talking about manual orders. Also I didn't realize it's an e-cells station, which raises another suggestion

if I can flip flop. I hate setting prices manually but doing so may force your traders to ignore bad offers. Just like, set a price at 30% of the range so that they're only selling to larger orders. But then your traders might go idle when there are no more matching orders, and you'll have to change it again.

if there are no trades.

if there are no trades above some computed score. What clarification we've gotten on that might be all we get. To find that formula we might have to go into the files.

[GCU Grey Area]

I too have had good experience with auto pricing. I don't recall this happening in past games pre-7.0...

It's not a new thing. First encountered it myself in my 3.0 Split game. Built a moderately huge self-sufficient factory in Tharka's Ravine XVI which it turned out exceeded local demand for several of it's products. It was initially running on auto-pricing, so when stock levels for those wares maxed out, prices fell to minimum & the nearest stations with any demand at all became viable trades & preferred due to proximity. Short term solution was to fix my prices, long term solution was to build a trade station in Silent Witness to increase the number of customers that products from my factory could reach. This trade station also had fixed prices, with buy price for each ware set to factory price +1cr & sell to factory price +2cr.