Why are my Manticores not delivering Scrap?

[Scoob]

Hey all,

I have a Scrap Processing and Recycling Station set up, it's been working pretty well. I'm steadily extending it - self-feeding due to closed-loop, and currently it has three Scrap Processors feeding six Scrap Recyclers. It has ample energy, with the station's own Solar Panels generating a generous excess of power.

I was just checking on the station in the Logical Station overview screen and noticed that all three Scrap Processors are idle, which is odd, considering ALL of the station's Manticores are parked outside the Station with wrecks / scrap cubes ready to drop off, but they're just not doing so. Looking at the station in external view I can see that all three Processors are indeed idle and ready for scrap (no red minus sign) but deliveries are not happening.

Currently, I'm hanging out at this station, or close proximity, and a delivery hasn't occurred in some time. Station has a good buffer of Scrap Metal (a little under 80% full) so the Scrap Recyclers are working at 100% capacity, so no worries there. It's just the Processors that are idle despite scrap deliveries being right there waiting for drop-off.

Checking the Station's BUY offers, I can clearly see that it's requesting over 5k scrap, so the demand is certainly there. Plus all Manticores show their current order as being "Deliver Salvage", yet they are clearly not doing so. When a Scrap Processor is processing, of course no new scrap can be delivered, however all three on this station have been idle for some time now.

I do see this from time to time, Scrap Processing just stops, despite Manticores being sat there waiting. I suspect it's linked to me being in-sector for an extended period, I could teleport away, but I want to be here at the moment. This station has been working pretty well, but it's totally stalled.

There are numerous legitimate reasons why the Scrap Processors might go idle, but none apply here:

- No energy cells to process the scrap (station has excess ECs)
- All processors already working (they've been idle for a while)
- Scrap Metal output is FULL (over 20% storage available still)
- Manticores are waiting to deliver but more distant Manticores that are en-route are ahead of them in the queue. Silly, but happens. (ALL Manticores are at the station waiting)

Are there any other legitimate reasons that might cause idle Scrap Processors? Is there some action I can take to restart deliveries? What am I missing here?

Edit: to be clear, this does look like a "Player close" bug. I teleported away to another sector and, within a minute, I saw a Manticore offload its towed wreck. All other Manticores are still unmoving, so only one of the three processors is working . I'm hoping the others will wake up soon... Interestingly, that first Manticore that successfully unloaded, flew off, grabbed another wreck and (cube this time) and offloaded it to the SAME processor, while none of the others have moved. This has actually become quite broken. I'm going to give it more time with me in another sector, to see if the other Manticores recover. Currently though, only ONE is working

Edit 2: This might, in part at least, be linked to the "buy up to" bug. This is where the setting is on AUTOMATIC by default, yet it sets an arbitrary value behind the scenes. I.e. It's set to "Auto" but will only buy up to a very small amount. On "Auto" the demand (buy offer) for scrap at this Station was just the aforementioned 5k. Turning OFF Auto (so it says "buy up to" instead has increased this demand (buy offer) to over 100k! UI shows "Buy up to: 200,000" though. Once I did this, that ONE Manticore started offload at MULTIPLE Processors, all other Manticores remained idle though. So, I CLEARED their orders. They then instantly DROPPED what they were towing, and went after fresh wrecks. Their original wrecks are still near the station, but are being totally ignored, like they cannot see them.

Thought: are towed wrecks somehow expiring, leading to non-delivery? They still look like valid wrecks and I can right-click order a Manticore to "Collect Salvage" and they will then collect and offload it, but they will NOT collect it again with out an explicit manual order to do so. Odd. Sub-edit: I take that back, I just saw a manually-ordered Manticore collect the "old" wreck, bobble around for a bit before dropping it and going after something else... what is going on??

Edit 3: I'm seeing a pattern. Various XEN ships are being destroyed by my forces and their wrecks collected and delivered to my station. When deliveries break down, I can see that ALL the "Stuck" deliveries are for the NEWER XENON ships. So, SE's (the miner), F's (the heavy fighter) and the like. Scrap cubes broken down by my ships seem to get delivered fine - at least as I'm observing now - but I'm seeing wrecks of new ships getting stuck again. I'm using SETA while on the HQ to watch this remotely. Is there some problem with the NEW wreck models? Manticores are COLLECTING them, but they then fail to deliver and get stuck around the station - this is when working autonomously as a "Salvage for commander" subordinate. If ordered to collect such wrecks MANUALLY, they collect them, then abandon them soon after, no delivery.

Does anyone else source all their Claytronics and Hull Parts from scrapping? Can you confirm my observations?

Edit 4: Ok, I'm at a loss. I just saw a Manticore successfully deliver one of the new ship wrecks just fine, then one failed to deliver a regular Xenon N - dropping it again when I manually order it to collect. Perhaps the "pattern" I saw with just new wrecks being stuck outside the station initially was pure coincidence. Regardless though, when I'm present in-sector, wreck deliveries break down and any of those broken deliveries see the wreck concerned unable to be delivered even when manually ordered to do so. Hanging around Scrap Recycling stations breaks them.

Edit 5: Still not sure what causes this but, eventually, Scrap deliveries break. I have a second, much older Scrap Processing Station in my "home" sector where I don't hang out at all. I just checked on it and it looks like it's been stalled for hours, it's entire out of Scrap and all its (million+) Hull Parts have gone. It must have been stalled for ages. Like the other Scrap Processor, ALL the Manticores were parked right next to it with wrecks in tow but refusing to deliver. I cleared their orders and they promptly dropped their wrecks to get fresh ones, which they then delivered without issue.

Bottom line: Scrap deliveries stop working and the Manticore's orders have to be CLEARED before they resume. They will then IGNORE the wrecks they dropped.

[Imperial Good]

Try going into low attention (far away from station, preferably another sector, no camera looking at it) and see if that helps. Otherwise you will need to provide your not modified save file as part of a bug report for the developers to look into.

[LameFox]

Were any of the manticores queued there colliding with the station? If I remain at a station for too long, eventually ships will become embedded in it. They don't appear to teleport out like they do with other ships, nor can they now free themselves. When it comes time for that ship to do its thing, it ends up holding up the entire queue.

If your scrap station has solar arrays on it instead of shipping e cells in remotely, it can be particularly susceptible to this because of their surface area.

[Scoob]

Try going into low attention (far away from station, preferably another sector, no camera looking at it) and see if that helps. Otherwise you will need to provide your not modified save file as part of a bug report for the developers to look into.

That's what I did, though it didn't help until I cleared their existing orders. They then dropped the wrecks they were towing - never to pic them up again - and started working again. They appear to have continued working while I've stayed away. Save / Reload can wake them up, so I'm not sure if it'll demonstrate the issue. It seems to be a combination of the player being there and time passing, as it takes a while for things to break down.

Were any of the manticores queued there colliding with the station? If I remain at a station for too long, eventually ships will become embedded in it. They don't appear to teleport out like they do with other ships, nor can they now free themselves. When it comes time for that ship to do its thing, it ends up holding up the entire queue.

If your scrap station has solar arrays on it instead of shipping e cells in remotely, it can be particularly susceptible to this because of their surface area.

No, they were just parked near the station not delivering. They remained in this state even after I teleported away.

I'm not 100% sure the issue only triggers when I'm present, as my main scrap processing station - the original one - had also totally broken down. All Manticores were stopped near it, showing as delivering wrecks but they never did.

It's weird, it's like something breaks with the wreck, like it's expired or something. Cancel their order, they'll drop the wreck and go and collect a new one, delivering it just fine. They will IGNORE the dropped wrecks never trying to collect them. Order them to MANUALLY collect one of these discarded wrecks and they'll start towing, only to drop it moments later. Note: I've seen something similar with large wrecks. I had a Teuta dismantling a Xenon K. It then got attacked and fled. I tried to order it to go back to said wreck, but the right-click option was no longer present. The wreck was clearly still there and looking largely intact, but the game no longer saw it as a valid wreck.

I could load up an older vanilla game I have (I think I still have one from the v7.1 beta) and see if that exhibits the same issue. However, it'll take a lot of time potentially to see it happen again. If I have SETA in that save I can just park near the station and SETA to see if things break down.

[RubyRezal]

There is a potential condition you missed in your list: Insufficient space in Solid storage.

Raw scrap (S wrecks and scrap cubes) are stored in solid storage before processing. If the raw scrap in storage meets or exceeds the allocated space for scrap your Manticores will be unable to deliver until the backlog is processed.

I noticed this in my current game. It's odd because my one Manticore did not indicate a failed delivery like other ships normally do. It just sat there until I built more solid storage. My issue was caused when I manually delivered a bunch of ore which filled all available solid storage.

[Duncaroos]

Just wanted to clarify that Raw Scrap is not stored at all in any storage module. The Scrap Processor only can receive one unit of scrap (of w/e value of Raw Scrap) at a time from Manticores.

Scrap Metal is the output of the Scrap Processor, and is a solid storage type. This product is what goes into the solid storage modules.

If the Processor is not actively processing scrap, it can certainly take a scrap cube inside its claws, but it will just start to warn in the Logistic Panel that the process is waiting on storage for its output (Scrap Metal).

[RubyRezal]

I realize that's how it's displayed in the logical overview, but it does not mesh with the conditions I experienced. Maybe I'm wrong and it was just a coincidence.

[TheDeliveryMan]

From what I have observed, the processor reserves Scrap Metal storage space for incoming, not yet processed, Raw Scrap. If there is no free, unreserved, Scrap Metal storage space left, then no buy order for Raw Scrap is created. When considering the supply situation of a processor, you have to take that into account. A couple of M size wrecks, especially Xenon, can easily keep a processor busy for an hour or so.

[Duncaroos]

Seems silly that the processor is reserving space before creating a trade order for more raw scrap. Do other production modules do this too (e.g. refined metals output allocation get filled up....does that mean all Ore / ECell orders stop)? I don't think so from what I recall but now I want to go testing .

Manager ideally should be getting all scrap processors (and inputs for production modules) filled up whether the processed scrap metal (or production process) has somewhere to go or not. This allows a Manticores / trade vessels to go travel and pick up more material to drop off quickly later. Otherwise you get the case where, once the output space is free, you got processors / production modules idling around instead of immediately starting to process.

[Scoob]

To be clear, this is a bug of some sort, there is no legitimate reason for the Manticores to just stop working like this. If I hang around near any of my Scrap Processors for a while, they eventually break-down. Manticores just sat outside the station with scrap in-tow, not delivering. The station slowly starves. The ONLY solution I've found that works consistently is:

i) Leave the area - I just teleport to another ship or station elsewhere.
ii) Clear any existing order on all Manticores.

When I do this, the Manticores all start working perfectly once more. Just teleporting away doesn't work, their existing order HAS to be cleared, forcing them to drop the wreck they were towing. That wreck then bugs out, being IGNORED by any Manticores working for the station, and is instantly dropped again by any Manticore manually ordered to collect that wreck.

To be 100% clear. The station still wants scrap, buy orders present, and has ample storage for the output scrap metal, the Manticores arrive at the station with scrap, but refuse to off-load it.

This is a fairly recent bug for me, I'd not seen it prior to v7.1. I can literally trigger it at will by teleporting to one of my Scrap Processing stations and hang around for a while. Save / reload does not appear to preserve the issue for demonstration. If it did, I'd be able to show this in my vanilla game. I might give it another go, but if the Save doesn't show what happens "live" then I'm not sure how much help it will be.

The key to prevent it triggering is simply not to remain in proximity of a Scrap Processing station.

[CBJ]

Did you report this somewhere with an unmodified save? If not then we're really going to struggle to do anything about it.

[Scoob]

Did you report this somewhere with an unmodified save? If not then we're really going to struggle to do anything about it.

No, I haven't. I just wanted to discuss it here first. I have a totally vanilla game where the issue can occur, however, the save / reload process seems to fix* things from what I can tell so far. I'm running that Vanilla save currently, observing behaviour while exploiting SETA more than I usually would.

From what I can tell, purely by observation, when my Manticores are bringing in Scrap Cubes (and wrecks) from near by, things continue working. They arrive and offload once a Processor becomes free. However, when they start brining in Cubes and wrecks from further afield - out of high attention range in the current sector or another sector - I can sometimes see these deliveries failing. It's like the scrap cube has "expired" - cannot be delivered, cannot be manually collected again after dropping* - yet are still present being towed by a Manticore near the station, which cannot deliver it. Only happens if I'm near the Scrap Processing station.

I noticed that Scrap Cubes, and of course wrecks, do expire after a time anyway if not collected, and vanish. I have a Teuta creating scrap cubes some distance away - part of my testing - in this vanilla game. After a while, they'll just vanish and not be collected, as the Manticores have gone after closer options. I wonder if, due to the travel distance / time, these Cubes / wrecks are somehow expiring while still being towed. When the Manticore then arrives at the station, it cannot offload it properly. Cancelling the order causes it to DROP the cube/wreck but then it cannot be collected again - like it's somehow invalid. It's a strange one for sure.

As mentioned, I'm watching this in a vanilla game at the moment, trying to prove the point about more distant cubes/wrecks expiring after collection. This save however, I was originally collecting most cubes and wrecks from close by, so I waiting for all nearby Cubes to be gathered, while I have Teuta making more over 100km away. I'm hoping to see more consistent failures once they're travelling longer distances, ideally several sectors, to deliver the scrap. I may manually order several Manticore to collect wrecks from other sectors, it sorta changes what I'm testing - the automated collection and delivery of scrap - but it might help reproduce the bug when from an earlier point. I.e. a save can be useful potentially, albeit with a little more observation time needed.

* Said cubes / wrecks seem to have disappeared upon reloading.

[CBJ]

If you want it investigated then please make that report as soon as possible. And please keep the description as succinct as possible. Long descriptions are fine for discussions, but slow things down when a developer has to read an essay to get to the meat of the issue.

[Scoob]

If you want it investigated then please make that report as soon as possible. And please keep the description as succinct as possible. Long descriptions are fine for discussions, but slow things down when a developer has to read an essay to get to the meat of the issue.

I want to make sure I get a good reproduction case together first, as it doesn't survive a regular Save / Reload when the issue has already occurred. I'll waffle when discussing a topic to try to get to the bottom of things, but once I have something I'll be a little more to the point of course.

Edit: I am struggling to find a reliable repro, and my tests so far involve a lot of waiting in SETA for a Manticore to get stuck. They can sometimes remain stuck for 10-15 minutes under SETA before they do finally make a delivery. It's odd as I've seen some Manticores make more than one delivery in the same time - jumping the queue if you will - while others are stuck waiting. I've manually sent Manticores after distant wrecks to collect, one expired just as the Manticore got there (doh) another was collected and delivered ok, jumping the queue vs. other waiting Manticores. I've run out of testing time now, but want to try to spend more time on this one.

[Inspiration]

I just ran into the same issue, and did the obvious things and watched.

As mentioned earlier only one wreck/cube can be accepted and processed at a time.
Adding more scrap processors just results in one getting active as soon as raw scrap is put into it and with that the processing cycle is fully occupied.
This behavior must be tied to these modules not processing from a station wide storage, so they do not work independently from each-other.

If this is intentional behavior or not, I do not know, but its best to make specialized auxiliary scrap processing stations and assign at most two manticore to them.
Then ferry the scrap metal to your main station that does the heavy lifting for the recycling.
I will keep one processing module on my main station as its already there, we will see how it works out.

[Inspiration]

If you want it investigated then please make that report as soon as possible. And please keep the description as succinct as possible. Long descriptions are fine for discussions, but slow things down when a developer has to read an essay to get to the meat of the issue.

See my post just above here, I think this explains it all and it can save a lot of head-scratches.
Maybe make it clear in the module description or give a warning when more than one raw scrap processor is put on a station.
Assuming this is all intended behavior, obviously.

[Blaze1st]

Not sure what is causing your gridlock but my first scrap station has 10 manticores always waiting to drop scrap but they won't because allocated scrap metal storage is full and the recyclers can't keep up.

Essentially I have too many processors (1:1 ratio, 10 of each module) and the recyclers can never bring the scrap metal down enough to spin up any more than one of the processors at a time.

I'm currently building a second scrap station, this time with 1 processor to 4 recyclers ratio (because that's what Googling suggested) to see if that works better.

UPDATE: 1:4 ratio seems to work better with no scrap metal surplus. Manticores still queue a bit because only one thing can be scrapped at a time but 3/4 recyclers always running. I have 5 Manticores, could probably cut that down to three or four too without losing efficiency.