"Priority" trade ware bug is back...

[Scoob]

Hi,

I submitted various reports on this in the past and I thought it was fixed. However, it's not.

Picture this:

I have a Station that Imports ICE - no other BUY offers - and Sells both Food and Medical Supplies - no other SELL offers. That's it. Per-ware trade rules ensure NO other Trade Offers - Buy or Sell - are present. So, intermediate ware are NOT traded and there are no trade offers for them. Dead simple, and literally the heart of my Workforce-boosted economy.

Each station-assigned Trader (Container Class) is set to ONLY trade Food and Medical Supplies. THAT'S IT. That's all they're needed for. NOTHING ELSE.

Now, Ice deliveries were delayed for a short period - extra Miner Traders assigned to the warehouse - but Ice is being delivered just fine now. However, Water production dried up (see what I did there?) for a bit. While Water production has now resumed and will well exceed demand, that Station's Manager has INCORRECTLY set Water as a PRIORITY resource. As a result, the Station-assigned traders will trade nothing BUT water. A ware for which:

- There is NO TRADE OFFER FOR.
- Station-assigned ships are EXPLICITLY told NOT to trade.

Despite this, Station-assigned traders simply will not do ANYTHING until the Water situation is sorted.

This is seriously broken. For various reasons.

- A Station should NEVER set a ware as a priority when it's EXPLICITLY not traded at the Station. I.e. No trade offers at all.
- A Station should NEVER assigns a ship to a Priority ware, that the ship is EXPLICITLY configured NOT to trade.

This is a game-breaker, as was only highlighted due to Ice deliveries slowing down vs. consumption rate. It's ICE that the station was short on, which has been resolved.

I've submitted saves clearly demonstrating this issue previously. So, no save this time as I'm using some mods. However, this is a Core bit of functionality, not a mod thing. This issue appeared to be resolved, so I was really surprised to see it again.

Basically, any and all player-configured rules and settings are IGNORED by the station in this instance. It's WRONGLY set as a Priority ware something that's simply NOT traded. Period.

Has anyone else noticed this in a v7.5 game? I only did by chance, when the Ice supply got interrupted, allowing Water production to trickle to a halt for a short while.

To be clear, this is my typical set up when it comes to Food and Medical Supplies. One station, that imports Ice and exports Food and Meds. That's it.

Edit: For clarity.

Ships present as having FAILED orders, with a "No matching trade offer found". There of course ARE matching trade offers, for Food and Meds which the ships are tasked with trading. However, the broken "Priority ware" logic is obsessed with wanting to buy water, despite there genuinely being no actual trades for that, hence the message.

As I suggested before, it's FINE having something as a Priority. However, if it's NOT available (as was the case in the examples I gave previously) due to market conditions, move on to a ware is CAN trade. It should NEVER do nothing at all if it cannot find that priority ware, let alone that ware NOT being traded by the station (trade rules) and NOT something the Ship will trade anyway (Ware basket).

My stations are starving due to this issue. I'll need to manually ship food and meds to them, it cannot currently be automated while the station is low on water. That's crazy.

[Scoob]

Update:

Once water levels reached over 15% (100k allocated) which came from Water production at the station, thanks to deliveries of Ice, plus a one-off 12,000 units of Water manual delivery by myself things started working.

The broken Station-assigned Traders lost the "Priority" up arrows next to Water (which ISN'T a selected tradable ware remember) and they immediately went to pick up Food and Meds to sell.

So, it looks like the "Priority" ware level in this case is 15% as I'd manually set Allocated storage capacity for Water at 100k. 12k was delivered and 5k (5,429 units after some consumption) were produced at the station. Figure might be nearer 20% various modules were consuming Water the moment it was available of course.

While the "low water" condition triggered due to an Ice delivery issue - since resolved - lack of Water (non-tradable) halting ALL Food and Medical Supply deliveries (the ONLY wares the Station-assigned ships are allowed to trade) proves that this really isn't working well.

Priority ware logic desperately NEEDS to confirm the ware is Tradeable, which means both has a valid Trade Offer at the station (it did NOT in this case) and be a selected Ware in the ship's Ware Basket (again, it was NOT in this case). I hope this is clear.

The result of this issue, in this case, was a Station with LOADS of Food and Medical Supplies halting ALL deliveries. I only have ONE station relying on those deliveries currently. However, that could well have been DOZENS of stations starving and losing Workforce.

[LameFox]

I've seen something like this on my scrap stations I think.

Starting out, I build scrap stations with hab modules included, but I forbid them buying any food or meds except from my own faction. The idea is just to build the factories for that later, then enable the trades, rather than have to alter the design.

However, traders assigned to those stations are prioritising those wares and—probably as a result of that—almost never do anything. They could be selling e-cells, claytronics, and hull parts. I have stations and build sites around there for them to supply. They just sit idle. In the past I've tried manually editing their ware basket, to no effect. Now I just set up a separate warehouse station to move the wares until the other factories are ready.

[Scoob]

Your experience seem to be very much the same issue. It's a weird one though...

In my example above, I was checking the numbers and noted that Water stopped being a priority ware after stock got to over 15% or so. However, due to shenanigans, Ice imports did slow down again for a short while, resulting in Water running out entirely once more. However, this time, water NEVER became a priority ware - I was watching things quite closely at the time.

So, basically, I cannot identify when a ware become a priority ware. It's not just because it's run out, there's more to it. Perhaps there's a time element too, i.e. Ware under n% for so many minutes / production cycles that need a given ware. To be clear, the station never at any point had either BUY or SELL offers for Water. Trade rules for Water were set to "No Trading" (custom rule) PLUS I'd set Buy amount to 1 (lowest possible) and Sell Amount to "All but EVERYTHING" (aka nothing) to ensure there were no trade offers. I confirmed there were no trade offers via right-clicking on the Station in the map view and checking all trade offers. Water was not one of them.

You know, and I've reported this issue a number of times, the game needs to REMOVE the FORCED trade offers it adds. It's broken how it's forced on us currently. Plus, we should ALWAYS be able to remove a trade offer. Forced trade offers and random overriding of Automatic Buy / Sell amounts regularly forces me to manually do this carp, where simply being able to REMOVE the Trade offer - Buy or Sell - would fix things and be REALLY SIMPLE to understand for the player. Perhaps a Warning pop-up when doing so, to aid newer players might be nice, but if I say don't trade a ware, don't bloody trade it lol.

It is odd that aspects of this issue appeared to be resolved during the v7.5 Beta - the "Automatic" amount setting - but I'm running into issues with them again. Shame I've switched to a modded game, else I'd be able to simply share a save to show this - like I did during the Beta.