How can egosoft make autotrade better?

[nickolaiproblem]

Well autotrade could be implemented this way. You build a station that makes a certain ware. You then select traders to attach to that station and you make them autotrade. They will sell the certain ware that you choose to the stations with the highest price and the least distance to travel (going off your satellite information of course). I honestly think that is the only way autotrade should be implemented. Now if you don't have a station that produces wares then yes I believe you should have to manually input every trade order like we have to do now. If you could autotrade everything that would just take the fun out of it.

So this system almost incentivize trade oriented players to add to economy not just deliver not bad. I think allowing autotrade only for stations that produce wares might be a good idea a few mods already do that. Right now I am using tatertrader and its good but the biggest problem is that I can just sit on my ass and count credits rather than being active with my game.

[Falcrack]

Regular wages for NPC crew would add to the challenge, so that it is not simply a matter of printing money. You would have to consider whether the particular autotrade assignment is worth it. For profitable items, the profots will easily exceed the wages. For unprofitable items, or worse, sitting around idly, you could be losing money.

Other ways to make it better, ability to assign a home base when choosing buy and sell distance. Make it so that pilot skill level is not a limit on how many sectors the trader can traverse, but rather how much time the trade ship needs to take to find a good trade. Low skilled pilots can travel just as far as higher skilled pilots, but they take longer to find those trade deals. Lower skilled pilots would cost less in wages.

Give the option to create global sector blacklists, or whitelists for a particular trader. Give the ability to add all wares to trade, restrict to just legal wares, illegal wares, blacklist or whitelist certain factions, etc.

Or just take the tatertrader mod and incorporate it entirely into the base game.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Okay If I get your drift you basically you want a managers to have larger role by being the in between so would managers basically setup the trades for like this https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mo ... 206335.png

Yeah, but managers would be a small part of the whole thing. The thing that would matter more is the investment. Previous X games played this off pretty well because the only necessary MK3 Trading software was really hard to come across and it costed a relative fortune.

That's what is missing right now.

I disagree - with X4 there is investment where ATs are concerned, the difference is it is more time than money related. Getting suitably trained pilots from a shipyard/wharf is anything but a guarantee thus you need to rely on training pilots to a suitable level at least half the time.

The only thing that is really missing is better ship cargo management and usage, this could be facilitated by allowing the player to essentially set up trading stations. No new modules nor station types are required, just add the ability to add non-produced/consumed wares and set/add sale/purchase prices for those wares. We can currently transfer wares manually and set sale prices for those wares but that is it. Further to this, being able to directly manipulate the target ware level balance for a given station would be good too - currently the ware level balance is seemingly fixed (or at least totally automated).

Maybe autotraders of a sufficient level could have subordinate traders that work for them either buying/selling for the auto-trader's ship OR trading independently and RTBing if they can not find any deals.

The auto-trader logic at V2.20 is ok though, sure it is not necessarily optimal and as a rule of thumb there are quicker ways to earn credits in-game. This runs counter to X2/X3 where UTs/STs could be a major source of income but that is a good thing IMO.

As for limiting AT logic to being station based (or adding crew wages), I disagree where Vanilla X4 is concerned (inc. future DLC for X4). Maybe a good choice for X5 (should there ever be such a game) or a community mod for X4 though.

[nickolaiproblem]

Regular wages for NPC crew would add to the challenge, so that it is not simply a matter of printing money. You would have to consider whether the particular autotrade assignment is worth it. For profitable items, the profots will easily exceed the wages. For unprofitable items, or worse, sitting around idly, you could be losing money.

Other ways to make it better, ability to assign a home base when choosing buy and sell distance. Make it so that pilot skill level is not a limit on how many sectors the trader can traverse, but rather how much time the trade ship needs to take to find a good trade. Low skilled pilots can travel just as far as higher skilled pilots, but they take longer to find those trade deals. Lower skilled pilots would cost less in wages.

Give the option to create global sector blacklists, or whitelists for a particular trader. Give the ability to add all wares to trade, restrict to just legal wares, illegal wares, blacklist or whitelist certain factions, etc.

Or just take the tatertrader mod and incorporate it entirely into the base game.

While I like tatertrader I feel the best way to make sure experience is both rewarding and challenging is combining autotrader with wages like you mentioned before perhaps ui upgrades that tatertrader can be kept but there also needs to be a stronger economic simulation as well.

[nickolaiproblem]

Okay If I get your drift you basically you want a managers to have larger role by being the in between so would managers basically setup the trades for like this https://staticdelivery.nexusmods.com/mo ... 206335.png

Yeah, but managers would be a small part of the whole thing. The thing that would matter more is the investment. Previous X games played this off pretty well because the only necessary MK3 Trading software was really hard to come across and it costed a relative fortune.

That's what is missing right now.

I disagree - with X4 there is investment where ATs are concerned, the difference is it is more time than money related. Getting suitably trained pilots from a shipyard/wharf is anything but a guarantee thus you need to rely on training pilots to a suitable level at least half the time.

The only thing that is really missing is better ship cargo management and usage, this could be facilitated by allowing the player to essentially set up trading stations. No new modules nor station types are required, just add the ability to add non-produced/consumed wares and set/add sale/purchase prices for those wares. We can currently transfer wares manually and set sale prices for those wares but that is it. Further to this, being able to directly manipulate the target ware level balance for a given station would be good too - currently the ware level balance is seemingly fixed (or at least totally automated).

Maybe autotraders of a sufficient level could have subordinate traders that work for them either buying/selling for the auto-trader's ship OR trading independently and RTBing if they can not find any deals.

The auto-trader logic at V2.20 is ok though, sure it is not necessarily optimal and as a rule of thumb there are quicker ways to earn credits in-game. This runs counter to X2/X3 where UTs/STs could be a major source of income but that is a good thing IMO.

As for limiting AT logic to being station based (or adding crew wages), I disagree where Vanilla X4 is concerned (inc. future DLC for X4). Maybe a good choice for X5 (should there ever be such a game) or a community mod for X4 though.

Do your autotraders actually follow your orders because mine don't seem to. Also as to your second point maybe its a good idea to try this each ware is in certain category for example food rations in food stuffs category. A player can select which category of wares they want to buy and sell they can also select more as they their crew skill advances. So keep auto trade at 3 stars as rank up you add more category to sell. You can then select what trade independently option as well in case they can't find any of selected categories to sell. I would also like to see the jump option back up to 30 as well.

[Imperial Good]

Okay but how would make sure that its not "cheaty" or more so how do balance the game.

Obviously it only knows stations which you have trade offer details for...

Next to that, what is there to balance with it? Its not like expert auto trading will be even 1/10 of your income once you get a Warf going.

Right now I am using tatertrader and its good but the biggest problem is that I can just sit on my ass and count credits rather than being active with my game.

You are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Auto trading earns practically no money compared with operating ones own Warf and Shipyard. To give an idea, my Warf is making me well over 100M credits per hour and it is heavily bottlenecked and nowhere near self sufficient. It is currently sitting with 4-5 Odysseus orders, each likely worth 20M or more.

If anything auto trading needs to be heavily buffed. Auto mining earns credits a lot faster than auto trading and operating Warfs is orders of magnitude better than that. That said even a 4 star requirement for expert trading will mean you will only have 2-4 expert traders by 50 hour mark or so. Hence seems perfectly balanced to me, if not still too weak.

Regular wages for NPC crew would add to the challenge, so that it is not simply a matter of printing money. You would have to consider whether the particular autotrade assignment is worth it. For profitable items, the profots will easily exceed the wages. For unprofitable items, or worse, sitting around idly, you could be losing money.

Crew needs actual purposes then. Since currently nothing stops one operating all trade ships and mining ships with skeleton crew. Also what happens if the owner cannot afford wages? I think that is why they are avoiding the touching the subject.

Also most goods are very profitable since 2.00 changes.

Other ways to make it better, ability to assign a home base when choosing buy and sell distance. Make it so that pilot skill level is not a limit on how many sectors the trader can traverse, but rather how much time the trade ship needs to take to find a good trade. Low skilled pilots can travel just as far as higher skilled pilots, but they take longer to find those trade deals. Lower skilled pilots would cost less in wages.

This is counter productive to gameplay since it will result in a lot of topics complaining about how traders sit around doing nothing like back in 1.00.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...

Do your autotraders actually follow your orders because mine don't seem to.

I don't know what you are getting at here - autotraders are set and forget and trade only in the wares you tell them to. Not exactly sure what you are expecting. For station based traders, you have no control over what they trade in - that is for the assigned manager to work out.

I would also like to see the jump option back up to 30 as well.

I am not convinced that would achieve anything of value, the universe size is small enough that the current sector range maximum should allow them to trade from one side of the current universe to the other.

There are some generic order execution bugs that apply to a variety of circumstances but that has little or nothing to do with how good or bad the current autotrade logic is.

[nickolaiproblem]

Okay but how would make sure that its not "cheaty" or more so how do balance the game.

Obviously it only knows stations which you have trade offer details for...

Next to that, what is there to balance with it? Its not like expert auto trading will be even 1/10 of your income once you get a Warf going.

Right now I am using tatertrader and its good but the biggest problem is that I can just sit on my ass and count credits rather than being active with my game.

You are making a mountain out of a mole hill. Auto trading earns practically no money compared with operating ones own Warf and Shipyard. To give an idea, my Warf is making me well over 100M credits per hour and it is heavily bottlenecked and nowhere near self sufficient. It is currently sitting with 4-5 Odysseus orders, each likely worth 20M or more.

If anything auto trading needs to be heavily buffed. Auto mining earns credits a lot faster than auto trading and operating Warfs is orders of magnitude better than that. That said even a 4 star requirement for expert trading will mean you will only have 2-4 expert traders by 50 hour mark or so. Hence seems perfectly balanced to me, if not still too weak.

Regular wages for NPC crew would add to the challenge, so that it is not simply a matter of printing money. You would have to consider whether the particular autotrade assignment is worth it. For profitable items, the profots will easily exceed the wages. For unprofitable items, or worse, sitting around idly, you could be losing money.

Crew needs actual purposes then. Since currently nothing stops one operating all trade ships and mining ships with skeleton crew. Also what happens if the owner cannot afford wages? I think that is why they are avoiding the touching the subject.

Also most goods are very profitable since 2.00 changes.

Other ways to make it better, ability to assign a home base when choosing buy and sell distance. Make it so that pilot skill level is not a limit on how many sectors the trader can traverse, but rather how much time the trade ship needs to take to find a good trade. Low skilled pilots can travel just as far as higher skilled pilots, but they take longer to find those trade deals. Lower skilled pilots would cost less in wages.

This is counter productive to gameplay since it will result in a lot of topics complaining about how traders sit around doing nothing like back in 1.00.

How would you specially "Buff" auto trader

[nickolaiproblem]

...

Do your autotraders actually follow your orders because mine don't seem to.

I don't know what you are getting at here - autotraders are set and forget and trade only in the wares you tell them to. Not exactly sure what you are expecting. For station based traders, you have no control over what they trade in - that is for the assigned manager to work out.

I would also like to see the jump option back up to 30 as well.

I am not convinced that would achieve anything of value, the universe size is small enough that the current sector range maximum should allow them to trade from one side of the current universe to the other.

There are some generic order execution bugs that apply to a variety of circumstances but that has little or nothing to do with how good or bad the current autotrade logic is.

Thats the thing though it worked better at least for me when it was at 30 jumps it worked perfectly fine when it nerfed to only 5 it barely works.

[Nafensoriel]

"Logistics" in space kinda make autotrading a brilliant savant... or an absolute idiot. It is difficult to get an in-between without forcibly defining a terrain and the obstacles it represents.

For X to really get autotrading to work well they would have to establish a supply chain. On planet earth it goes something like Manufacturer > Truck/Train > Transload(sea/air)(optional) > Truck/Endpoint consumer/ Distribution center

With X4 you really only have one "truck" and it makes things actually more complicated not less.

If a sector was required to send all goods to an equipment/Trade dock FIRST and then have those goods get transloaded into ships which could then go to OTHER trade distribution hubs you would define TRUCK from TRAIN logistics. Then the inefficiencies of the larger hulls would be drastically reduced as they would ALWAYS be hauling at high capacity in very simple routes with very simple thinking.

IE my "ideal world" autotrader would be divided into 3 classes.
Type 1: Local
\\Can't Jump(spin it that the jumpgates have special needs for higher mass that won't fit in small ships)
\\Fast and relatively high manoeuvrability compared to XL

Type 2: Mass Movers(highway)
\\Can jump
\\Will only be able to quickly trade goods with specialized docks
\\Have absurd cargo

Type 3: Specialist
\\Sized as XL
\\Inefficient compared to XL in an industrialized system
\\Efficient in transferring goods to non-specialized stations/ships
((This is defined as being able to pull ore from miners or supply construction ships as a "mobile dock" to ensure the loss of a trade hub doesn't absolutely cripple an economy)

This means you can break autotrader into local 1 order rapid trades where positioning of factories might give you a price advantage due to turnaround time and you can have a separate autotrader which can shift multiple commodities and be balanced by having plenty of time to do that between docks. Size and speed would no longer be a major obstacle in going XL/L over M. Not having a distribution centre just guts any hope of having a trader work without being absurdly OP.

[nickolaiproblem]

"Logistics" in space kinda make autotrading a brilliant savant... or an absolute idiot. It is difficult to get an in-between without forcibly defining a terrain and the obstacles it represents.

For X to really get autotrading to work well they would have to establish a supply chain. On planet earth it goes something like Manufacturer > Truck/Train > Transload(sea/air)(optional) > Truck/Endpoint consumer/ Distribution center

With X4 you really only have one "truck" and it makes things actually more complicated not less.

If a sector was required to send all goods to an equipment/Trade dock FIRST and then have those goods get transloaded into ships which could then go to OTHER trade distribution hubs you would define TRUCK from TRAIN logistics. Then the inefficiencies of the larger hulls would be drastically reduced as they would ALWAYS be hauling at high capacity in very simple routes with very simple thinking.

IE my "ideal world" autotrader would be divided into 3 classes.
Type 1: Local
\\Can't Jump(spin it that the jumpgates have special needs for higher mass that won't fit in small ships)
\\Fast and relatively high manoeuvrability compared to XL

Type 2: Mass Movers(highway)
\\Can jump
\\Will only be able to quickly trade goods with specialized docks
\\Have absurd cargo

Type 3: Specialist
\\Sized as XL
\\Inefficient compared to XL in an industrialized system
\\Efficient in transferring goods to non-specialized stations/ships
((This is defined as being able to pull ore from miners or supply construction ships as a "mobile dock" to ensure the loss of a trade hub doesn't absolutely cripple an economy)

This means you can break autotrader into local 1 order rapid trades where positioning of factories might give you a price advantage due to turnaround time and you can have a separate autotrader which can shift multiple commodities and be balanced by having plenty of time to do that between docks. Size and speed would no longer be a major obstacle in going XL/L over M. Not having a distribution centre just guts any hope of having a trader work without being absurdly OP.

So would this type 1 be sector or local just be confined to in sector trades basically. Also are type 3 effectively be like semi trucks or would they be like mobile trading docks? Could you expand upon type 2's absurd cargo and specialized docks I'm intrested in seeing what your ideas on that are. Lastly would devs have create new distribution centers or could they use existing trade hubs?

[Nafensoriel]

So would this type 1 be sector or local just be confined to in sector trades basically. Also are type 3 effectively be like semi trucks or would they be like mobile trading docks? Could you expand upon type 2's absurd cargo and specialized docks I'm intrested in seeing what your ideas on that are. Lastly would devs have create new distribution centers or could they use existing trade hubs?

In that example, a Type 1 would be a truck similar to a local delivery from a warehouse/Distribution Center. It would exist locally and be sector limited. It actually makes more sense that you would have a form of "local only" trader just because EVERYTHING involving logistics is in cutting costs to the absolute minimum for every kilogram of freight moved.

Type 2 would be a rail/air type transport. Large amounts cargo but limited places to pull or place said cargo from. You could easily reuse the trade and equipment docks for hubs. To get a decent efficiency though you would have to either A significantly increase storage of the dock or you would have to allow these ships to "autopilot dock" very quickly to these docks and only these docks. An X4 DCs only requirement is a place for big ships to dock and a large storage buffer to allow for swings in price as goods come and go.

Dividing these two just prevents tail chasing. If you have a local trader able to jump to the next system you suddenly have "mad rush" syndrome. If you limit "local" and "global" you allow progression with highly competitive local markets that have much lower start-up costs to the player that can then transition into high volume mass trades. If you could blind the economy a little and make each faction spread out their production a little bit more you could easily create a situation where the high volume trades would turn into opportunities for sudden surges of profits or even situations where a little bit of "piracy" could cripple a sector for the short term. It would also encourage players to build SMART focused factories vs giant spew everything megacomplexes. You'd actually have a choice between megaplex for safety and diversified for profits.

Type 3 ideally would be similar to how a fast combat support ship works or a ship's tender. A ship designed from the ground up to support other ships away from the port and underway. In real life, these can be barely bigger than an ocean-going speedboat or as large as a cruise ship.
This is a fast combat support ship example. /fixed link
Since egosoft has already talked about "resupply" ships this is an ideal place for them that doesn't make them obsolete by carriers and the like.
Such a ship could be as examples:
1] Mining focused and have cargo drones to "collect" the take from several M/S miners and act as an XL transport for a factory. It would also allow you to "base" a support wing of fighters utilizing preexisting scripts so no extra horsepower required game wise.
2] Act as a temporary trade dock for those wanting to RP pirate "mobile" foundations or just to speed up the building in a remote sector.
3] Act as a "tramp" freighter which can move to a sector.. Collect goods.. and then move to another remote sector as a means of profit generation. Ideally, this type of thing would be 30 jumps+ vs 5 for standard traders. The slower nature of the ship would be offset by its utility.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

...

Thats the thing though it worked better at least for me when it was at 30 jumps it worked perfectly fine when it nerfed to only 5 it barely works.

You will have to define "barely works" since that could mean a variety of things and there is nothing in what you have said to date that points at sector range being at fault.

In the latest patches, pilot ability/skill level has seemingly started to be applied properly to both commands and formations. Previously, it was at least a little inconsistent in the way it has been applied. Case in point, I have a pilot who's pilot rating is 3+ but their morale is low resulting in a less than 3 actual rating. This means that while the pilot in question was at one point up to the task of running the Autotrade command BUT they stopped running the command and idled with a sub-3 overall rating. These cases (pilots assigned a command they are no longer able to run) should ideally be flagged to the player through the player logs at the very least. At the moment the reporting does not seem to happen and the order gets stuck in a seemingly endless idle loop rather than cancelling the order and alerting the player.

In the absence of any details (I have not read the entire thread), such a circumstance could be occuring in your case. It might be irritating if this occurs, but if the cancelling/reporting is implemented then that would address my only real complaint about the underlying implementation. Personally, I would rather not have the morale mechanic at all but it is what it is.

[Imperial Good]

How would you specially "Buff" auto trader

I already mentioned in a previous reply. Similar to mining make 3 different auto trade modes.

0 Star: Import/Export
3 Star: Sector Auto Trade
4 Star: Universal Auto Trade

Import/Export allows a trade to import and/or export a single product from the anchored sector. This is like current auto trade except limited to just 1 ware. This solves the 3 star captain problem with the current auto trade since for some sectors with clear under or over supply this will suffice until then.

Sector Auto Trade is what we have now as auto trade. Import and/or export a list of wares. Possibly an additional sector range over currently.

Universal Auto Trade operates completely different from the current auto trade. Potential future routes get resolved in advance while the ship is executing trades, so as to allow much more complex and resource intensive planning, and the resolved routes are orientated around where the ship will end up. When a trade would not fully use the storage of the ship, try to combine wares for multiple destinations along the route. General idea is to minimize the amount of time/distance spent with free storage. Could also do basic time cost optimization to avoid sending a L trader across the universe rather than just 1-2 sectors to make only 10% more from the trade. Station auto traders should exhibit this to some extent if a manager, and possibly the trader, is skilled enough.

[freedom4135]

I just wish that there was a " Trade For " option for the build storage. Tired of baby sitting my freighters that im trying to get to trade with the build storage only.

[nickolaiproblem]

So would this type 1 be sector or local just be confined to in sector trades basically. Also are type 3 effectively be like semi trucks or would they be like mobile trading docks? Could you expand upon type 2's absurd cargo and specialized docks I'm intrested in seeing what your ideas on that are. Lastly would devs have create new distribution centers or could they use existing trade hubs?

In that example, a Type 1 would be a truck similar to a local delivery from a warehouse/Distribution Center. It would exist locally and be sector limited. It actually makes more sense that you would have a form of "local only" trader just because EVERYTHING involving logistics is in cutting costs to the absolute minimum for every kilogram of freight moved.

Type 2 would be a rail/air type transport. Large amounts cargo but limited places to pull or place said cargo from. You could easily reuse the trade and equipment docks for hubs. To get a decent efficiency though you would have to either A significantly increase storage of the dock or you would have to allow these ships to "autopilot dock" very quickly to these docks and only these docks. An X4 DCs only requirement is a place for big ships to dock and a large storage buffer to allow for swings in price as goods come and go.

Dividing these two just prevents tail chasing. If you have a local trader able to jump to the next system you suddenly have "mad rush" syndrome. If you limit "local" and "global" you allow progression with highly competitive local markets that have much lower start-up costs to the player that can then transition into high volume mass trades. If you could blind the economy a little and make each faction spread out their production a little bit more you could easily create a situation where the high volume trades would turn into opportunities for sudden surges of profits or even situations where a little bit of "piracy" could cripple a sector for the short term. It would also encourage players to build SMART focused factories vs giant spew everything megacomplexes. You'd actually have a choice between megaplex for safety and diversified for profits.

Type 3 ideally would be similar to how a fast combat support ship works or a ship's tender. A ship designed from the ground up to support other ships away from the port and underway. In real life, these can be barely bigger than an ocean-going speedboat or as large as a cruise ship.
This is a fast combat support ship example. /fixed link
Since egosoft has already talked about "resupply" ships this is an ideal place for them that doesn't make them obsolete by carriers and the like.
Such a ship could be as examples:
1] Mining focused and have cargo drones to "collect" the take from several M/S miners and act as an XL transport for a factory. It would also allow you to "base" a support wing of fighters utilizing preexisting scripts so no extra horsepower required game wise.
2] Act as a temporary trade dock for those wanting to RP pirate "mobile" foundations or just to speed up the building in a remote sector.
3] Act as a "tramp" freighter which can move to a sector.. Collect goods.. and then move to another remote sector as a means of profit generation. Ideally, this type of thing would be 30 jumps+ vs 5 for standard traders. The slower nature of the ship would be offset by its utility.

I really like the idea of this being able to create a actually dynamic world and shipping empire. Would how many jumps would a type 2 vessel have?

[nickolaiproblem]

I just wish that there was a " Trade For " option for the build storage. Tired of baby sitting my freighters that im trying to get to trade with the build storage only.

I perhaps for station building you automatically add the wares your missing to shopping list and then have one traders go out and get it.

[Nafensoriel]

0 Star: Import/Export
3 Star: Sector Auto Trade
4 Star: Universal Auto Trade

The problem with this hierarchy is that you can apply it to any size freighter. This means an XL/L ship is always going to be fighting S/M and losing every single time. For code purposes, unless you have the receiving port know it has x amount of goods incoming all it takes is one S trader to screw over a slower trader. Toss in 5 or 6 S class ships doing the same thing and by the time the L ship gets there the docks full and the script breaks or repeats in an endless loop of failure. I
If you do "remote contact" the dock and hold the inventory space its NOT a live economy. You will rapidly run into situations where auto traders trade in pennies or factories are endlessly waiting for goods that never show up.
Without segregation of these types of trading, AutoTrader will always favour speed over cargo capacity.

@nickolaiproblem
"Rail"(type2) freighters would have an unlimited range as they are operating in a narrow scope. They cannot dock outside a hub so a range limit actually impacts them negatively.

[nickolaiproblem]

0 Star: Import/Export
3 Star: Sector Auto Trade
4 Star: Universal Auto Trade

The problem with this hierarchy is that you can apply it to any size freighter. This means an XL/L ship is always going to be fighting S/M and losing every single time. For code purposes, unless you have the receiving port know it has x amount of goods incoming all it takes is one S trader to screw over a slower trader. Toss in 5 or 6 S class ships doing the same thing and by the time the L ship gets there the docks full and the script breaks or repeats in an endless loop of failure. I
If you do "remote contact" the dock and hold the inventory space its NOT a live economy. You will rapidly run into situations where auto traders trade in pennies or factories are endlessly waiting for goods that never show up.
Without segregation of these types of trading, AutoTrader will always favour speed over cargo capacity.

@nickolaiproblem
"Rail"(type2) freighters would have an unlimited range as they are operating in a narrow scope. They cannot dock outside a hub so a range limit actually impacts them negatively.

I seriously hope egosoft considers implementing your idea or at least some modder makes it because this a really really great idea. If this thread dies please post this idea at some point on the forum.

[Imperial Good]

The problem with this hierarchy is that you can apply it to any size freighter. This means an XL/L ship is always going to be fighting S/M and losing every single time. For code purposes, unless you have the receiving port know it has x amount of goods incoming all it takes is one S trader to screw over a slower trader. Toss in 5 or 6 S class ships doing the same thing and by the time the L ship gets there the docks full and the script breaks or repeats in an endless loop of failure. I
If you do "remote contact" the dock and hold the inventory space its NOT a live economy. You will rapidly run into situations where auto traders trade in pennies or factories are endlessly waiting for goods that never show up.
Without segregation of these types of trading, AutoTrader will always favour speed over cargo capacity.

@nickolaiproblem
"Rail"(type2) freighters would have an unlimited range as they are operating in a narrow scope. They cannot dock outside a hub so a range limit actually impacts them negatively.

Which is why it makes the multi step trade route in advance, like it does currently. Hence an L ship will not lose out to S and M ships since it will be reserving both the buying and sales of wares in advance and hence removing them as selections for S and M ships.

In case people were not aware, once a ship is given a trade order to buy product that product is removed from sale using the ware reservation system. Same applies to stations buying wares, with the buy orders being removed as ships reserve sales to them. The buy/sell price even updates instantly based on this. Ware reservation only breaks if the order logic of the station is updated while ware reservations still exist on the station, eg as the result of a new module being finished or a save/load cycle. After an order logic update the station may cancel ware reservations and hence break existing trades. If this is encountered the ship needs to find a new buyer for the ware or cancel the sales.

Currently auto trade does a simple 1 buy 1 sell order pattern. This is not very efficient as it can be hard to get full loads of wares for larger trade ships as well as can waste a lot of time flying around with empty holds. Universal trade could queue up multiple buy and sell orders at the same time, queued in such a way to optimized time spent with a full cargo hold as well as reduce travel distance in the long term. As the orders are executed new ones may be appended, keeping the ship constantly busy and trying to keep the ship holds as full as possible.

Obviously order queue length would be limited so as to keep ware reservation times reasonable, for example it might only queue enough orders that it is not recycling space used before in the planned trip more than twice. There could even be a very rough ETA, needed anyway for time based optimization, which can be made to not exceed 30 or 60 minutes. In worst cases stations could even look at this ETA and cancel/refuse orders that would have an unreasonable ETA for them to produce efficiently, possibly this could even be a game feature with more mechanics to it.