[#3669] Bug: 7.50 - PHQ stops creating trade offers when terraforming ptoject is active

[tuxinvader]

Hi all,

TL;DR: PHQ stops creating most buy offers when Samsara terraforming project is active.

Waffle:
I started doing the Ocean of Fantasy (Samsara) terraforming mission yesterday, but I have an issue with the PHQ. Obviously I have teleported the station to O-of-F (where there is no sunlight), and so I need to buy in energy cells for the day-to-day running of the station. I didn't notice at first, but the station isn't buying energy cells or medical supplies (or air-freshners for the toilets on B deck), I finally noticed something was wrong when the workforce started dying/leaving. I spent a lot of time last night trying to get the trade offers running, I even tried hand modifying the save file to add in trade offers for energy cells, all to no avail. I even tried sacking the manager

Discovery:
In the end I discovered that the first terraforming project (Tectonic Scaffolding) was blocking the trade offers being advertised. Aborting the project returns the situation to normal and PHQ starts buying again. Is this a bug or expected behaviour?

Details:
Version: 7.50 (553255)
OS: Linux Mint 22 (Ubuntu 24.04)
Hardware: AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D (NVidia GPU)
Modified: No

Save File: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/6pswhfro ... k8r3s&dl=0

Steps to reproduce:
1. Load Save file.
2. Open map and view PHQ trade offers. Note the lack of buy offers for Energy Cells and many other sundries.
3. Navigate to the Terraforming UI and abort the "Tectonic Scaffolding" project.
4. Return to the map and view PHQ trade offers. Observe the many new offers.

Thank You!

[BitByte]

For other wares what your PHQ needs do you have manual or automatic allocation in use or have you limited storage allocation of terraforming wares or just have so much total storage that terraforming resources won't affect in big picture to e.g. energy cells or medical supplies allocation so dramatically?
How many traders you have assigned to your PHQ or nearby (your own) stations which will handle deliveries?

[tuxinvader]

Nice idea, the PHQ has 8 L and 2 S Argon Storage modules (9100 km3). The TF seems to want around 9m, but is that just because that's what I have available? There doesn't appear to be a way to set the storage though???

I stopped the terraform project, and manually set the Ecell storage to 200K and then restarted TF. The storage should be available, but the trade offers disappear immediately. I also tried manually setting the storage for each TF component to much lower values, but still no ecell buy offer

[BitByte]

You're right about terraforming allocation - as project requires more resources / storage space it will allocate automatically maximum amount what is available (in your case 8*L+2*S so 8+m).
When you set allocation for example to e-cells and medical supplies manually it will reduce available space what automation can share between wares.
Especially when you have other production and workforce in your PHQ it's required to use manual allocation for those so it won't halt normal functions while you perform terraforming tasks.

Another thing what you may need do when you set manual allocation is disable automatic buy amount and set it manually to max (for wares you need bring in).
After you have set manual buy amounts for important wares you may need bring multiple loads of wares manually until automation starts work again.
And make sure your PHQ have enough freighters to handle trades.
You can also choose for PHQ freighters what wares they handle individually. So you can for example remove automation from few freighters and choose couple handles only energy cells + food and couple handles medical supplies. Depending how much e-cells, food, medical supplies and other wares you need concider is it wise to share 1 ship for multiple or just single ware type.

[tuxinvader]

Thanks BitByte, but there's some kind of bug.

It doesn't effect all wares because the PHQ still has buy offers for other resources. But ecell, med supplies and a few others all get removed when I enable the TF project, setting manual storage and pricing for the wares makes no difference.

I also can't set up traders to fill the needs, because the PHQ doesn't want the wares. You can only set up a repeat order (for example) if the station actually wants to buy the ware your trader is peddling. Which means micro managing the trader, sending them to buy ecells and return to "transfer wares" with the station and then repeat. You can't repeat order a transfer, only a sale.

For now I'm going to cancel the TF and do something else, until someone at Egosoft can take a look for me.

Cheers

[Mysterial]

I believe the issue here is that when terraforming is using resources that are already used by the station for something else, the terraforming buy order does not consistently get displayed in the Logistical Overview UI. Looking at the station in the map view you might see it have a buy order for 500,000 Hull Parts or whatever but the management UI shows only the 'normal' order for Hull Parts. This causes the other normal resources to be starved due to lack of storage but it's not possible for the player to reconfigure storage requests to avoid it.

Sidenote: I think terraforming projects allocate way too much storage. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but I feel like [HQ build capacity] x [largest drone cost] is more than sufficient storage since the HQ won't be able to utilize more than that at once anyway. In the rare case the player can deliver faster than drones build they can increase the storage request themselves.

[tuxinvader]

I believe the issue here is that when terraforming is using resources that are already used by the station for something else, the terraforming buy order does not consistently get displayed in the Logistical Overview UI. Looking at the station in the map view you might see it have a buy order for 500,000 Hull Parts or whatever but the management UI shows only the 'normal' order for Hull Parts. This causes the other normal resources to be starved due to lack of storage but it's not possible for the player to reconfigure storage requests to avoid it.

Sidenote: I think terraforming projects allocate way too much storage. Maybe someone can correct me on this, but I feel like [HQ build capacity] x [largest drone cost] is more than sufficient storage since the HQ won't be able to utilize more than that at once anyway. In the rare case the player can deliver faster than drones build they can increase the storage request themselves.

I'm not sure that that is the case in my situation. Using Energy Cells as an example: the logistical UI shows energy cells available and the amount of storage allocated (manually or otherwise), which is less than the auto/manual buy amount. But when I check buy offers in the map (station -> trade offers) I see no buy offers for ECs. Are you saying that you think there is an invisible buy offer? I could try setting up an auto trader to buy ecells and sell in the sector. If there really is an invisible buy offer then he should eventually attempt to fulfil it, but I really don't think there is.

[Mysterial]

I was curious, so I checked the savegame. It looks OK initially, but if you increase the station's money (I set it to 1 billion) then you will see the buy offer for Metallic Microlattice on the map exceed the storage amount that's listed in Logical Overview. To make it even more obvious, manually override the Microlattice storage amount. Nothing happens to the buy offer. There's a hidden terraforming allocation/offer taking the space. This extra storage consumption has to be taken from something, so the other buy offers get starved.