Do ships ever clear their cargo?

[Raptor34]

Two situations.

First, I'm unassigning L miners from my old mining stations. Let's say they mine ore and have a cargo of ore. And then I assign them to a new one that mine's silicon or maybe a mix of ore and silicon. What happens in these cases? Would they intelligently dump the old load and start mining the new one's? I assume if it's ore to ore then they'll just "sell" at the new station.

Second. I'm clearing out some old trade stations selling container goods, so like hull parts, computronics, that kinda thing. I go to their logical overview and click remove buy offers. But I see that I do have incoming trade ships both NPCs and from my other stations. What do those ships do now? Going by my experience with cleaning out my mining stations they'll come in to dock and then fail to trade, but then what do they do with the cargo after this?
I assume those from my other stations would unload at the home station? But what happens if the home station is full? Do they just wait until there is space or they find a buyer? Or is it just permanently stuck until I somehow notice, track it down and dump it manually? What about NPC free traders or my auto traders? Do they somehow find a buyer? Dump it? Or if it's like say Terran goods in Split space, just be stuck forever?

[adeine]

As far as I can tell, they do not. This is a recurring issue when changing terraforming projects, as all the miners assigned to the station will be filled with resources that might no longer have allocation.

They're hard stuck until you manually go through the list and dump their cargo hold, at which point they begin mining what's actually required now.

[Raptor34]

Now that you mention it, I remember there used to be issues with stations demanding 2 or more types of say, solids, where they would basically clog up your miners, which is why for the longest time it's recommended not to mix them. I also remember that that issue was resolved, though I cannot remember how it was resolved.

[flywlyx]

Now that you mention it, I remember there used to be issues with stations demanding 2 or more types of say, solids, where they would basically clog up your miners, which is why for the longest time it's recommended not to mix them. I also remember that that issue was resolved, though I cannot remember how it was resolved.

You can now assign miners to target specific mining material. So ore miners only mine ore, no need to dump anything anymore.

[stooper88]

The old issue was any station that required more than one type of gas or mineral would only mine one gas (e.g. helium but not methane) or one mineral (e.g. ore but not silicon). This would prevent the station from being able to fulfill its input requirements unless the other resources were supplied through other means (purchasing from NPC factions or manual trades). That issue no longer exists.

Presently, miners that are tasked with collecting a given resource will ignore any other residual resources occupying space in their holds. This can happen if they fail to completely sell all quantities of a previous mining run (due to insufficient demand) and are subsequently tasked with mining a different resource. The residual cargo will diminish their remaining capacity and reduce efficiency but will not prevent them from continuing mining.

In my experience, these issues eventually sort themselves out if/when the miners are once again tasked with mining the original resource by the station manager. At that point, they'll simply fill the remaining hold space with the material in question and proceed to deliver/sell as per usual. If efficiency is paramount, then players can always manually eject unwanted residual cargo to restore maximum mining capacity.

[Raptor34]

In my experience, these issues eventually sort themselves out if/when the miners are once again tasked with mining the original resource by the station manager. At that point, they'll simply fill the remaining hold space with the material in question and proceed to deliver/sell as per usual. If efficiency is paramount, then players can always manually eject unwanted residual cargo to restore maximum mining capacity.

I see. Thanks.
This is the part I was wondering about.
I can live with some efficiency loss since afaict I'm probably flooding the raw material market already. Somehow.
Like my old Ore mining station I managed to empty it out, but the Silicon one dropped to half and then just stopped selling even after dropping the price to minimum so whatever.

But beyond that, how do traders for products work?
When their buyer goes poof whether through enemy action or in my case I cancelled the buy orders.
Do they do the same as miners and if they happen to be ordered to deal with that particular product they'll take into account what they have in their holds?

I assume they have to do something since cancelling an order is as simple as clicking an X in the screen. Otherwise you can easily crash the NPC economy by just luring in all their traders, cancelling their orders and now all the NPC traders just don't work anymore because they are filled.

[stooper88]

But beyond that, how do traders for products work?
When their buyer goes poof whether through enemy action or in my case I cancelled the buy orders.
Do they do the same as miners and if they happen to be ordered to deal with that particular product they'll take into account what they have in their holds?

I assume they have to do something since cancelling an order is as simple as clicking an X in the screen. Otherwise you can easily crash the NPC economy by just luring in all their traders, cancelling their orders and now all the NPC traders just don't work anymore because they are filled.

In my experience, subordinate traders are at the beck and call of their station manager and independent (local and advanced) autotraders are at their own discretion. Any wares that fail to be sold for whatever reason will be re-prioritized for sale according to whatever rules, ware baskets, etc apply. In simple terms, my traders eventually just seek out new buyers. Whether this happens immediately or eventually depends on what other orders they have queued and availability of buyers for the impacted wares.

[Raptor34]

But beyond that, how do traders for products work?
When their buyer goes poof whether through enemy action or in my case I cancelled the buy orders.
Do they do the same as miners and if they happen to be ordered to deal with that particular product they'll take into account what they have in their holds?

I assume they have to do something since cancelling an order is as simple as clicking an X in the screen. Otherwise you can easily crash the NPC economy by just luring in all their traders, cancelling their orders and now all the NPC traders just don't work anymore because they are filled.

In my experience, subordinate traders are at the beck and call of their station manager and independent (local and advanced) autotraders are at their own discretion. Any wares that fail to be sold for whatever reason will be re-prioritized for sale according to whatever rules, ware baskets, etc apply. In simple terms, my traders eventually just seek out new buyers. Whether this happens immediately or eventually depends on what other orders they have queued and availability of buyers for the impacted wares.

I see. Thanks.
So basically they'll eventually sort it out then and I don't need to worry.
I just remember the old X3 UTs where they'll eventually start whining about not being able to find trades because they got a whole bunch of random shit in their cargo holds they can't sell... Was a real PITA. Glad I don't have to baby them.

[stooper88]

I see. Thanks.
So basically they'll eventually sort it out then and I don't need to worry.
I just remember the old X3 UTs where they'll eventually start whining about not being able to find trades because they got a whole bunch of random shit in their cargo holds they can't sell... Was a real PITA. Glad I don't have to baby them.

In X3, I remember having to reset UTs else they would basically be "frozen" and unable to trade at all.

In theory, it's possible for X4 traders to similarly fail to find buyers for "stale" wares. But the difference is they'll happily move on to other trades and continue to be productive while monitoring for new opportunities to unload the old goods. These traders will have the orange "failed orders" indicator but will not be paralyzed by such.

[Raptor34]

I see. Thanks.
So basically they'll eventually sort it out then and I don't need to worry.
I just remember the old X3 UTs where they'll eventually start whining about not being able to find trades because they got a whole bunch of random shit in their cargo holds they can't sell... Was a real PITA. Glad I don't have to baby them.

In X3, I remember having to reset UTs else they would basically be "frozen" and unable to trade at all.

In theory, it's possible for X4 traders to similarly fail to find buyers for "stale" wares. But the difference is they'll happily move on to other trades and continue to be productive while monitoring for new opportunities to unload the old goods. These traders will have the orange "failed orders" indicator but will not be paralyzed by such.

What I remembered is they are stuck because their cargo bay is completely clogged, so no storage, no trades found. That was before ware reservation and probably one of the reasons we have it now.
It seems like that can still happen, but at least it also seems like eventually it'll sort itself out.