Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

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Berserk Knight
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Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Berserk Knight » Sun, 10. Feb 19, 09:49

Specifically, I'd like to be able to change the wares selection.

Right now, if you order multiple (I did this with 6) miners at the same time to mine for a station that takes multiple raw resources (it took in all of them minus Nividium, but the ships were mineral miners so Ice, Ore and Silicon), most of the time they all think the same thing and fly off to mine the exact same resource (last time, it was Ice).
That fills one resource, but none of the others are filled and the respective modules that use them won't start producing until the next run. (...Well, one of them at least.)
Since all the miners went off to mine the same resource at the closest area, they usually finish mining the resource, dropping it off at the station, and then decide what to mine next at roughly the same time.
Thus, even on the second run, they usually end up going after the exact same resource as each other AGAIN (they decided on Silicon), and that leaves the third production module sitting idle until the third mining run (when they FINALLY pick up that resource) is complete.

With the ability to change the wares selection, I'd be able to order 3 to mine one specific resource each for a steady supply, and then leave the other 3 with the full list to mine whatever resource that has the highest deficit.

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Loneshade
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Loneshade » Sun, 10. Feb 19, 22:01

I'd suggest a slight rework of the manager AI... so that at higher manager levels he should 'learn' to assign his ships to different resources.

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Berserk Knight » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 08:37

Loneshade wrote:
Sun, 10. Feb 19, 22:01
I'd suggest a slight rework of the manager AI... so that at higher manager levels he should 'learn' to assign his ships to different resources.
That's not the AI responsible for it in the first place, and even if it was, it wouldn't solve the problem of having absolutely no control over them.

Station miners use the exact same script as the normal Auto Mine command. Same goes for the traders.
(Fun fact : There is a virtual ware reservation that's supposed to coordinate work between different miners and traders. Given what I see, I'm not sure how effective it is.)

The problem is that,
a) we have absolutely no control over the ware selection unlike the regular Auto Mine/Trade (all buttons greyed out),
and even if we did (like back in 1.5),
b) there's a check in there that constantly resets the entire ware selection back to the full list if it happens to be a subordinate for a station.

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akeelah
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by akeelah » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 17:45

I gave up on Station Traders entirely. They were constantly selling off excess Energy Cells rather than the factory's primary output (Smart Chips, for example). This despite the fact that Smart Chips are in high demand in the surrounding sectors and they make MUCH more money than Energy Cells. Each factory's Container Storage would fill completely with Smart Chips and the factory would sit idle for a while before one of the Station Traders would finally sell off a single load, before reverting back to Energy Cells. Each station has a Manager with two stars in Management (the highest I've seen so far in my game).

Instead, I assigned several AutoTraders to each factory's sector. I restricted their Wares list to the factory's primary output, and set their "buy" gates to 0 and their "sell" gates to maximum. After balancing the number of AutoTraders against the factory's output and the distances generally travelled for selling, it seems to work well. However, the money goes directly into the main (player) account, rather than the station's account -- which is fine with me.
Last edited by akeelah on Wed, 13. Feb 19, 18:59, edited 1 time in total.
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j.harshaw
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by j.harshaw » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14

Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by iforgotmysocks » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:20

It should mean that the manager would be "smart" enough to know what resources he needs and to send ships to gather them as they're required. And that stationtraders aren't selling the main product and switch to some secondary ware even tho it really doesn't make sense sounds like a bug to me. ^^

When ships are assigned, they usually shouldn't take much micromanagement, otherwise things can get out of hand. X-R was pretty well designed in that regard.

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by EmperorDragon » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:28

j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
Subordinates allows for a nice "clean" owned property tab instead of a massive list of unassigned ships on autotrade, which can get pretty messy as your empire grows. It also helps a lot to keep track of all your ships thanks to the number of subordinates shown for each station on the property tab. It's just more efficient to have ships listed under the factory they work for.
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Berserk Knight
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Berserk Knight » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 19:54

j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
With station miners, I want them to mine things and exclusively supply the station.
With station traders, I want them to exclusively buy things the station makes and sell them somewhere else, or buy things somewhere else to exclusively supply the station.

You know, do mining/trading work that needs to be done for the station.

Which is the point of using subordinates. (On top of what EmperorDragon said.)

What doesn't work is the AI being an idiot quite a lot of the time and not figuring out how to properly distribute miners and traders between the wares.

By having some CONTROL over the WARES THEY HANDLE, I can give them a smack in the head that they deserve and tell them how they should be doing things, such as "maintain a minimum of 1 miner for each resource so none of the refineries go idle, then have the rest of the mining fleet fill in the most critically low resource" which is what I'm trying to achieve.

I want AUTOMATION (with methods to adjust the behavior as needed), not "be at the mercy of stupid AI".

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by MurryChang » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 19:57

j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
You should at least be able to set the wares the ship does and does not trade. Assigning them to the station seems like the obvious solution to not having autotraders clogging up your main ship list to me. If the station manager script isn't smart enough to sell my whole stock of spaceweed to the high demand station in the next sector rather than selling 20 spice halfway across the galaxy, that seems like a coding issue and not a problem on my part.

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Frostnads
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Frostnads » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 20:41

Had similar trouble having my miners provide Ice to my factory so I didn’t have to buy it from Npc's.

As a sort of work around, I sent my Crane (mineral) Vanguard to the sector my factory was located, and set it to automine with Ice selected as the only resource to mine. When it arrived at the nearest Ice resource, I counted the sectors (was 2) and set the ships sector limit to 2. Then set the factory to Not Buy Ice from other factions, and Raised the Ice Buy Price to the HIGHEST amount, and Sell to the Lowest.

Worked for me, anyway. The Crane mines Ice and sells it in a constant loop to that factory.
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by caltrop » Mon, 11. Feb 19, 23:56

j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
The goal is to have the miners/traders work for the station in a way specified by the player - as was possible in previous X games:

viewtopic.php?t=151495

The ideal for me would be to have the configurability of independent auto miners/traders but be able to assign them to a station. They would mine or trade the station wares defined by the player, use station funds and return profits to the station. If that means the pilots needs higher skills (as they are not directly controlled by the manager), then that also makes sense for balance reasons.

ReverieSwimming
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by ReverieSwimming » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 00:07

j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
Another issue with the "autotraders as station traders" band-aid is that it requires 3-star captains to autotrade. Without a reliable way to get 3-star captains, it can be a royal pain to actually set this up. I just want to sell one ware from one station. A 3-star captain should not be necessary to do such a simple task, so there needs to be functionality built into station-trading (like with CLS from the X3AP bonus pack)

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Berserk Knight » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 01:18

In any case, 1.50 had 2 mods that fixed station miners and station traders respectively.
All we had to do back then was disable the part that constantly reset the ware selection. (Solves problem B.)
Then 1.60 came around and broke both of them by making the order parameters inaccessible. (Problem A.)
Technically, the trader mod still worked and solved problem B for station traders, but with no way to change the ware selection, it was effectively useless.
The miner mod on the other hand, was hit with some script changes and was broken even without the new problem A.


I got around to downgrading to 1.50 so I could compare against the 1.60 code, and found which part of the code was making the order parameters inaccessible.
Made a mod for 1.60 that makes the parameters accessible again. (Solves problem A.)
The trader mod can be used as is, but the miner mod needs a little fix to work.
(In case anyone's wondering, they're on Nexus.)

...Until EgoSoft provides us with this basic but fairly important function in the base game, I'll have to mod my way through the mess.

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by EvanRath » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 02:21

Berserk Knight wrote:
Tue, 12. Feb 19, 01:18

Made a mod for 1.60 that makes the parameters accessible again. (Solves problem A.)
The trader mod can be used as is, but the miner mod needs a little fix to work.
(In case anyone's wondering, they're on Nexus.)

...Until EgoSoft provides us with this basic but fairly important function in the base game, I'll have to mod my way through the mess.
hey Berserk, what is your mod on nexus called?

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by StormMagi » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 03:33

ReverieSwimming wrote:
Tue, 12. Feb 19, 00:07
j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
Another issue with the "autotraders as station traders" band-aid is that it requires 3-star captains to autotrade. Without a reliable way to get 3-star captains, it can be a royal pain to actually set this up. I just want to sell one ware from one station. A 3-star captain should not be necessary to do such a simple task, so there needs to be functionality built into station-trading (like with CLS from the X3AP bonus pack)
One way I have seen to get 3 star is buy mining fleets and trade out the captains with trade ships >_>
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Berserk Knight
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by Berserk Knight » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 04:23

EvanRath wrote:
Tue, 12. Feb 19, 02:21
hey Berserk, what is your mod on nexus called?
"Subordinate Order Access"

...I'm terrible at naming things.

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by ReverieSwimming » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 04:42

StormMagi wrote:
Tue, 12. Feb 19, 03:33
One way I have seen to get 3 star is buy mining fleets and trade out the captains with trade ships >_>
Oh, I have been doing that too, but with the current crew transfer system, it is eye-gougingly tedious to do. You have to:
  • Dock the ships at the same station
  • Assign the 3-star captain as a service crewman or marine of one of the ships (which naturally requires an empty crew space, so you might have to fire someone)
  • Send the low-ranked captain to the miner
  • Promote the 3-star captain to the trading ship
  • Re-enable both of their assigned orders
All of this requiring a whole lot of clicks. If you're doing this with, say, 10 to 15 auto-traders at a single go, it makes you want to just close the game out. That's one of the problems I have been having with X4. Every problem has a work-around, that requires a word-around, that requires a work-around, that is actually bugged out.

Meanwhile, the X3:TC/AP bonus pack had Community Logistics Software that contained robust customization including, but not limited to: ware blacklists, minimum cargo levels, specific station waypoints, etc. On top of this, you also had the ability to copy profiles, meaning you could copy one traders settings to future ones to speed up the process. Did I mention that these features came out almost ten years ago? I'm sorry (and please don't think I am taking this out on you because I quoted your post, it's just that you reminded me of how broken so many of these things are), but going backwards in functionality is just not acceptable.

And on top of all this, the auto-traders still aren't guaranteed to work correctly anyway! I've been watching a "band-aid" auto-trader fly in circles next to the station he is supposed to be trading from for 15 minutes on SETA. He did two trips when I first set him up, and then decided to stop working, even though the station has a surplus of his assigned ware, and there is massive demand elsewhere in the galaxy. It's utterly infuriating.

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by StormMagi » Tue, 12. Feb 19, 16:14

I don't mind, I have vented a few times about the visual aesthetics X4 has taken compared to TC/AP/Rebirth myself, I don't know there reasons for all the choices but I have picked up tidbits here and there that help explain some elements.

Mmmm. I was never paying super close attention, but in my last 1.5/1.6 game I had a single autotrader for every ware and they seemed to be working fine. Though sometimes I would get random transactions for a 150-1500 credits. And while TC/AP had those community plugins, those games were more or less built ontop of X3R so there weren't nearly as many issues as with X4. I am not a programmer by any means (though I do have a very basic understanding from some classes back in community college), nor have I even looked at X4's code, but given how much has changed, I would not be surprised if they simply couldn't use scripts like that from TC/AP (not to mention they might not have had permission to use them, I doubt that would be an issue but worth mentioning). I have also read on the forums, since I can't read German, that there might have been some financial issues that required Egosoft to release a little earlier than planned. If that is the case, they did a damned sight better than other companies. Yes a there were some bugs, but they pulled back the initial scope (player shipyards, maybe more complex research and such) and released a, while shallow compared to previous games, decent game. Not to mention they are working hard to add in the features initially missing from launch.

As much fun as I am having with X4, I have been giving some serious thought to playing Rebirth (stopped before first addon due to campaign stopping bug and life happened so never restarted) or AP (since my X3 time was all in TC) for a year or so until first DLC is out and some QOL fixes are in. Which sucks because I am having fun in X4 but at the same time, there are many slight annoyances (that I am fairly sure will be fixed) that kinda add up.
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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by ReverieSwimming » Sun, 17. Feb 19, 22:49

StormMagi wrote:
Tue, 12. Feb 19, 16:14
As much fun as I am having with X4, I have been giving some serious thought to playing Rebirth (stopped before first addon due to campaign stopping bug and life happened so never restarted) or AP (since my X3 time was all in TC) for a year or so until first DLC is out and some QOL fixes are in. Which sucks because I am having fun in X4 but at the same time, there are many slight annoyances (that I am fairly sure will be fixed) that kinda add up.
I've pretty much been doing the same. I'll play X4 for an hour or two until the bugs, broken features, and lack of content get to be too much, and then I quit out and play X3 or Rebirth for a few days. Repeat every time a patch comes out.

There are a ton of fundamental things that simply don't work, but the station / auto traders part is what's killing me most. I'm tired of seeing trade ships with 12,000 m3 of cargo space only trading 50 m3 of wares to a station whose storage is nearly full, when meanwhile, in the sector next door, there is a shipyard whose production is halted because it is missing 30,000 units of the same ware.

I've tried every workaround suggested. I've tried auto-traders with one ware, but they never actually do any trade runs. I've tried dropping the prices of the ware, but my traders will still only sell 50 m3. I've tried using s-class cargo ships so they can complete the runs quicker, but when they finish the run, they sit idly doing nothing for 10 minutes, before loading up on, you guessed it, 50 m3 of wares.

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Re: Can we get some control over station miners and traders?

Post by StormMagi » Mon, 18. Feb 19, 05:14

M-D-Hansen wrote:
Mon, 18. Feb 19, 04:45
j.harshaw wrote:
Mon, 11. Feb 19, 18:14
Was about to suggest something similar to what akeelah posted. If you want control over these miners, why assign them to the station in the first place? (Note that that wasn't a rhetorical question. i really would like to know what people think assigning something to be subordinate to something else means in the game.)
If the station manager gets smart enough to actually control what he/the station needs, there are no issues. Currently, he isn't by an astronomical lightmile. I got subordinates sitting in space with over 50k of rations/medical inbetween them because the station is full and I can't tell them to not buy more of it. Wich again means I have to micromanagement. I don't mind that, I'm odd that way, but it defeats the purpose of having a manager in the first place, doesn't it?

Ideally, my opinion, we should be able to tell them what they autotrade, so I can have 1 dedicated food supplier f.ex. Unless ofcourse the manager gets some proper management skills and can micromanage the station himself

best regards
Mads
Don't get your hopes up, 2.0B3 seems to have trader max range limited by Manager rank to a maximum of 5 jumps (rank 5) (which actually is increasing at a decent rate) AND limited by pilot rank (ie 2 star gets 2/5 range). More than a little annoyed at this.
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