Station-assigned Traders - odd choice where to sell

[Scoob]

Hey all,

This has me sort of puzzled, picture this:

I have a station that SELLS Hull Parts. It has loads of them, selling for the bear minimum price and has plenty of M-Class Transporters assigned to it. This station only sells to my Faction.

In the same sector I have several stations. One is currently being expanded and its Build Storage is demanding lots of Hull Parts and paying a premium (aka max) price for them. A second station consumes Hull Parts as part of its production, it's like 99% full so has a demand for a dozen or so Hull Parts and is paying the absolute minimum price for them.

So, that's the picture. One station's Build Storage paying a HIGH price for lots of Hull Parts, a second station paying the minimum price for just a dozen of them, and a station selling Hull Parts. Guess which BUY offer the ships assigned to the SELLING station keep going to? Is it A) The one offering a HIGH price with high demand for the ware, or B) The one offering a LOW price with barely any demand for the ware?

Of course it's A... erm, no, it's B. Multiple station-assigned (to the SELLING station) Traders are doing micro top-up of the low demand station. None are going to the HIGH demand station's Build site. I expect it'll all work its self out, there does sometimes seem to be a delay when a new trade offer appears. Other times, especially for fresh build sites, ships are incoming almost immediately.

Does anyone else see this? Odd isn't it? I'm currently seeing a build site unable to start construction, while ships from the supplying station are drip-feeding a second station that has near-zero demand. Both Pricing and required volumes should make the Build Storage FAR more attractive. Indeed, I use dynamic pricing (auto) all the time to help balance supply to a station that needs multiple wares. It does not appear to be working here though. Why would a very low station Production resource demand be far more attractive than a Build Storage? Game is usually a little more logical than this...

[TheDeliveryMan]

I don't use station traders because they are way too unpredictable. Are they even supposed to make profit oriented decisions, I don't know.

I prefer Repeat Orders, they do exactly what I tell them to do.

So, that's the picture. One station's Build Storage paying a HIGH price for lots of Hull Parts, a second station paying the minimum price for just a dozen of them, and a station selling Hull Parts. Guess which BUY offer the ships assigned to the SELLING station keep going to? Is it A) The one offering a HIGH price with high demand for the ware, or B) The one offering a LOW price with barely any demand for the ware?

Let me guess, the nearest station with an acceptable price?

That's what I oberve with Repeat Orders, if there are several stations in the same buy/sell group, they always go to the nearest station with on acceptable price. For me that's no problem, because I can just set up several priority groups. For example, my Hull Parts suppliers have three sell groups, first sells for 260 Cr (a little below max price), the second sells for 209 Cr (average price), and the last group sells for minimum price.

For station traders the solution would be to not sell at bare minimum price.

[Duncaroos]

Confirm the stations are in the same sector as the production station? If it is indeed in the same sector, this is odd behavior imo.

Related topic maybe will help shed some light:
viewtopic.php?p=5250912#p5250912

Simplified code script for trade decisions by a dev:
viewtopic.php?p=5216710#p5216710

[Scoob]

After making some odd choices for deliveries, after a while, things started working more as I'd expect. I've seen this before, a weird delay before ships respond to trade offers. Now, sure, if a ship is already performing a trade run as a better offer appears, of course it's got to finish what it's doing first. However, for it then to return to the source station and do another trade run as if the new offer doesn't exist is a little odd.

Can't really explain it, station-assigned ship were trading, but seeming stuck for a while doing those low-volume trades, ignoring the high-volume, high-price ones.

[Scoob]

There does seem to be a delay from when a Trade Offer is presented (new ware requirements) to when station-assigned ship can "see" it.

Just now, I expanded a station so it needed a NEW resource - I shipyard, I'd added a L Ship Fabrication Bay BUT had no L-Class Ship Blueprints yet. I went and bought some Blueprints, so additional resource requirements were added to the Logical Overview screen. I then Created BUY offers.

Prior to this the station was full of everything - but still had spare capacity due to some manual storage allocation by myself. The station's own assigned traders were all sat there with "Failed" orders, as there was literally nothing for them to buy. Perfectly fine and expected. However, when I added trade orders (Buy) for the new resource, I CLEARED the "failed" status of all these ships. I then checked the station had issued the correct new trade offer (right-click Trade Offers) and waited. About 30 seconds later ALL the station-assigned ships were showing a Failed order again - no trade offers - despite their being valid trade offers present. I leave it a minute or so, ships still idle, then I see that ships from the Supplying station had begun shipping the needed ware, but I still needed a LOT more. Only after several minutes did the consuming station's own assigned traders eventually see the trade offers.

So, it's confirmed that there can be a several minute delay, with station-assigned ships failing with a "no valid trade offers found" error, even when valid trade offers 100% exist. Basically, it's taking a couple of minutes or so for ships to react to a new Trade Offer. They're not just slow to react, they will show as FAILED even when a valid offer exists. They do recover, but that initial failure is odd, and makes it look like there's a problem (i.e. things not set up properly) when there's NOT.

[MKL81]

I don't use station traders because they are way too unpredictable. Are they even supposed to make profit oriented decisions, I don't know.

I prefer Repeat Orders, they do exactly what I tell them to do.

Station Traders can be tricky, especially with multiple stations within same sector where you expect traders to behave exactly as you want. However after some level of experimenting with setups I'm pretty happy with results, for me the level of desired prices on stations with activity blacklists did the job. That being said, I still use repeat orders a bit. The response time is much better and you don't need to worry why they travel back and forth with only 5% of cargo space being used.

[vkolosov]

I tend to use station trading because the traders become hidden from the main ship list, which is already crowded. Have hundreds of ships, and traders are a good chunk of them.

If anyone knows how to hide ships from the main list, please tell. I’d be happy to use repeat orders for most cases, but that would be too many ships on the list. I already append a ~ symbol to repeat order trading ships so they get pushed down to the bottom of the list, but having hundreds of them there is too much.

[GCU Grey Area]

If anyone knows how to hide ships from the main list, please tell. I’d be happy to use repeat orders for most cases, but that would be too many ships on the list.

It is possible to assign repeat orders ships to a station, thus removing them from the unassigned list. Procedure is to set their default behaviour to repeat orders, but don't click on confirm yet. Then assign them to a station in the usual manner. Finally click on the repeat orders confirm.

[MKL81]

If anyone knows how to hide ships from the main list, please tell. I’d be happy to use repeat orders for most cases, but that would be too many ships on the list.

It is possible to assign repeat orders ships to a station, thus removing them from the unassigned list. Procedure is to set their default behaviour to repeat orders, but don't click on confirm yet. Then assign them to a station in the usual manner. Finally click on the repeat orders confirm.

Yup, I'm doing the same thing with my Energy Traders on repeat, delivering ECs to my scrapyard from my own Solar megacomplex.