How can egosoft make autotrade better?

[EmperorDragon]

Yeah, that together with a more detailed list for trade partners (race/sector/specific factory) could go a long way to be able to control what happens to our wares, and would allow for better income as well.

A perfect example where this would have been very helpful was during the buildup leading to my war with the PAR. My autotraders kept on trading with and supplying PAR factories when I would've preferred my traders only to trade with specific HOP factories. This means that I actually bolstered my enemy's (PAR) economy shortly before war broke out whilst the HOP (my allies) struggled to keep up.

PAR still fell, but it would've been more logical if I could have set up my traders to supply HOP factories only, even if it meant less profitsss.

EDIT: It will also help keep my "agricultural" couriers away from ARG stations and getting busted all the time. They should trade with HAT and SCA stations only, preferably ones in unclaimed sectors. It would be great if I could set them up as such.

[Nafensoriel]

The actual ROI is notionally infinite or until the trader is destroyed/retired. The rate of ROI is not that unreasonable in most cases, a lot depends on the universe state and where the trader is operating but that is not unusual for the X-games in general.

Game not real life. Your concept of infinite is flawed when you consider as a game the system has to consider player time and engagement. If you make it they won't use it unless its fun or satisfies a need that is fun. ROI is thus Investment+engagement/time. Again we are not going to agree on this. I doubt our focus in our entertainment is the same.

You seemingly fail to understand the economy model of X4.

The concept of discounted wholesale pricing logic is flawed in the context of X4 - in the real world there are on-going costs related to storage, in X4 those costs are not present. The point I am making is that in order to avoid stations operating at a loss the ware auto-pricing logic should take into account numerous factors and ensure they recoup their costs of production. The current logic of basing ware pricing purely on stock levels is inherently flawed.

As for resources being infinite, that is not entirely true for X4 since we do not have mining stations like we did in X1-X3. The asteroids in general do regenerate but they are still limited in quantity at any given time and it is possible to deplete an area for at least a time. It is also false reasoning to consider them a free resource since the stations notionally either have to pay for the resources (from NPCs) or have their resources locked down and run enough of the stations own miners. Even then, that only applies to producing the first level processed goods, beyond that the available goods are limited by various factors.

This has no validity in reality.
Costs of storage do not factor into the logic of segregation and the dynamics of how a warehouse functions. Nor do they factor into discounts for large volume purchases. If you really think a scalar discount for large volume purchases is impossible or damaging to a game like X4 you need to go back to economics 101. This is especially impactful considering almost no production module in X4 trades at a loss. Ever. It is fundamentally incorrect to assume "trade at a loss" is a factor as well.
If my endpoint silicon wafers trade at a loss but the resources are freely generated infinite and I mined them... have I traded for a loss or just less profit?

Infinite resources apply to all source. Mission money is infinate. Ship recovery from derelict is infinite. Asteroids are infinite. "Enemy", as in things to shoot at, are infinite. There are so many faucets into the economy the only limiting factor is an arbitrary limitation on certain goods for producing higher tire aspects of the economy. As long as ANY OF THOSE ELEMENTS exist in the universe technically it is recoverable by these infinite resource means.

You are ignoring numerous factors regarding how the economy works and auto-trading is not the only way to generate income. As I have already pointed out in this post, the concept of pricing wares purely based on percentile of storage is inherently flawed, it is a nice simple model but it does not allow stations to price their wares based on acquisition cost and thus can result in the associated station running at a loss. Having built quite a few stations myself I have seen at least one case of this happening. As a result of that occurrence, I have adopted a fixed pricing strategy for ALL my stations and that has guaranteed the stations in question not operating at a loss regardless of stock levels.

Unlike the real world, there is not a concept of infinite inflation either - all wares are banded in terms of pricing but the nature of those bands is that it is possible for factories to operate at a loss which makes little sense in terms of being the normal state of affairs and end result of trying to push trading towards bulk trading would ultimately end up with that happening.

Again categorically wrong.
I, nor my suggestions, care about the other aspects of the economy because we are not attempting to create a new economy. Those suggestions are not even changing the way the current economy works. Functionally all they are doing is applying built-in m3 movement limitations ALREADY BUILT INTO THE GAME to ensure more significant price swings happen that ALREADY HAPPEN to lesser degrees. In other words from an economic back end, nothing changes. Want to test it out yourself? Make a station that has the storage capacity I suggest. Do no other changes. Once it fills to median loads you'll notice something absolutely fantastic! It behaves just like every other form of storage in the game! The difference is its price only shifts every 25000m3 vs every 3000m3. The "simple" model used by x4/x3 is sufficient for this. Your problem with it is you think it's going to stagnate. Yes, it will.. but if you have enough volume moving that doesn't matter to the endpoint user because frankly most of them won't notice.

Additionally to address factories trading at a loss...
Water does... but its source is infinite. So it isn't a loss.
Antimater cells do... but its source is infinite. So it isn't a loss.
Graphene does... but its source is infinite...
Refined metals...
Silicon wafers...
SUperfluid coolent...

Notice the pattern? As long as a station is supplied.. it cannot operate for a loss unless it buys infinite resources. I know personally for a water factory to make a profit it must maintain ice above 30% storage. Is this stupid? Yes. Is it broken? No.
It's part of that whole wish of mine to redo the entire production m3 budget and time thing.
What a storage hub and trade segregation do in the short term is capitalized on where the current system works and ensure goods can be buffered against AI tomfoolery. A movement of 40-50k m3 will cause price shifts.. which will shift goods.. which will cause profit potential for everyone(even if the ai doesn't give a fig about it). Consider it a well thought out bandaid to a problem unlikely to ever get fixed by egosoft themselves.

Alot depends on numerous factors but the biggest problem in my current universe state is actually lack of supply for certain goods

Engine parts and the like have consumers out the cthulhu tuchus and single supply points. Just increasing supply won't exactly help when the m3 to move those goods is so small. I personally think the parts required for new ships is a bit.. nuts shall we say for a good that produces every 15 minutes and cant fill an L freighter inside of 3 hours. This is especially nuts considering the ships that get blown up require 15 minutes or production per ship minimum in most cases. I, unfortunately, can't consider such statistical outliers because of how mind-bogglingly absurd they are.
Fair note as well... I haven't had much headway into 2.0 as I'm currently restricted to my laptop and it thinks Rimworld is "hard™" to run. I can boot x4 on it but it turns into a welders furnace and burns down the plant. Any changes beyond the patch notes I'm missing here?

Hell bluntly if they just let us directly order our staff what to trade and where 90% of this entire argument would be moot. The asinine shotgun we have to deal with now is annoying.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

Well, it may not be directly related to the topic but, it will help a lot if we could edit the ware lists of station subordinate autotraders without the station manager resetting the ware list after each trade. This will help especially for large complexes where traders only need to transport specific wares.

At least in Vanilla v2.21, we currently can not alter the wares lists of station subordinates at all. The setting is greyed out and the manager seemingly configures it on a per ship basis as they see fit. At least IME. That being said, I have already suggested something along these lines and agree in principle.

Being able to set cargo limits will also help (for normal autotraders as well as station subordinate traders) i.e. traders will not transport a ware unless it can load a specified amount. For example, you set the minimum cargo amount for hull parts at 500, traders will not load hull parts unless they can load 500 or more. This will help avoid cases where a Sonra transports 1 energy cell across 3 sectors.

I am not convinced setting ware transfer limits would actually help matters though, the freighter as auto-trader/station-trader concern is a complex one with multiple related issues and concerns. Arguably, freighters (and other L/XL vessels used for automated trading) need a different solution to the current available options. Simply setting minimum trading-quantity/cargo amounts is a fundamentally flawed proposition for various reasons, most of which I believe I have already outlined in my post debunking the desire for boom-and-bust/bulk-focused trading.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

/snip

Even warehouses in the real world operate like businesses with costs associated with storing stuff. There are also shelf-life issues with a lot of products in the real world and while in some cases this can be mitigated with special storage conditions it is not always feasible or economic to do so. In the specific context of real world support supply chains it is a delicate balancing act between maintaining sufficient quantities of goods and procuring goods on demand a lot depends on expected through put of the spares, service level agreements, procurement timescales, and the risk of the supplier(s) being not able to provide the relevant goods when needed. In the specific context of real world supply chains, similar concerns come into play. In the context of ware houses that supply goods in bulk at discounted rates, even the discounted rates are going to be earning them profit.

Ever wonder why prices in general keep going up over the years in the real world? It is in general because everyone needs to make a profit and even storage of wares costs money, some of the proverbial leeches in the world economy make money by capitalising on so called "fire sales" which normally happen when a business closes for financial sustainability reasons of one sort or another. These leeches then buy up the goods at rock bottom prices from such places (perhaps below the nominal going rate) and then sell it on after tagging on their own profit margin. This is not the only way of obtaining goods and being able to sell them at discounted rates but pretty much all of them are not intended to operate at a loss.

In the specific context of X4, such discount practices do not fit with the overall economy model. You want to make the major profits then the only way you are going to do so is by investing in production facilities and managing them appropriately. Leave things to the AI and without appropriate planning such facilities are likely to run at a loss due to the automated pricing strategy being at least a little too simplistic and not giving due consideration to manufacturing/production costs.

Hell bluntly if they just let us directly order our staff what to trade and where 90% of this entire argument would be moot. The asinine shotgun we have to deal with now is annoying.

With free lance auto-traders, we have that control. With our own stations, that is what we have managers for and why we are also able to build self-sustaining complexes. The key point is knowing what to build and where to build it. The focus in X4 is more on the stations than it is on the traders and that is not necessarily a bad thing.

Being able to set up bespoke trade routes is a nicety not a necessity. In X2, bespoke trade routes were essential to successful operation of a successful production line. In the X3 games, it became less important due to the establishment of the concept of complexes but due to mining station considerations it was still a factor unless you wanted to micro-manage things. With X4, that level of management is on the most part unnecessary due to the new approach to complexes and mining in general.

Overall though, the concept of auto-traders in X4 has been relegated to a second fiddle option. While in X2/X3 it was probably one of the main focus areas of the game, the same can not be said of X4. It's focus is clearly more on the construction aspect as given away really by it's title - X4: Foundations.

[Nafensoriel]

/snipsnip

The way a warehouse function is not related to profit. The size of a warehouse is related to profit and how fast the goods are required to move. The logic for why a warehouse exists is rarely directly for profit. The segregation of why and how a train line is used vs a truck line is not related to profit.

The purpose for a warehouse is, as I've said before, buffering, freight mixing, and transhipment.
To define Buffering: Without warehouses, producers would have to store goods. For most applications in X4 and in real life this is "bad™". Why? Well, let's pick on how dry goods for most North American grocery stores work. Typically you have 3 types of goods. Goods that can be delivered daily, goods that can be delivered weekly, and goods that can only be delivered monthly or seasonally. In X4 terms think of these like water, hull parts, and engine parts respectively.
Without a warehouse, the instant a local surge of sales occurs for any reason such as BBQ season or, in X4s case a surge of shipbuilding, engine parts is impossible to "deliver" at any speed that would satisfy demand quickly or efficiently unless you happen to be right next to the factory. Most places in X4 are not in this category. In real life, the BBQs themselves would be the limiting factor due to the reality that you have the option of slowly producing your inventory over a year in a small but efficient factory.. or you have to produce them rapidly over a very small window at a price premium. Which do you think most real-world companies choose to do?

So what do they do? Even if it technically costs more money to store the product than immediately ship it in bulk the OVERALL efficiency of the slower year-round production is prefered AND cheaper. Warehouses buffer goods needed in bursts for specific applications.

They also buffer applications of goods like paper products. In X4 lets call them "hull parts" since they are about as widely used. Do you want to get goods from 12 different outlets or would you prefer ordering from one stop shop for all your business and commercial sales needs? Warehouses in these cases cause a median price cycle which keeps prices in multiple far-reaching locations similar provided it can maintain stock efficiently over time. Sudden surges can cause price movements but it requires a surge far higher than a local event like a natural disaster. (no we aren't going to argue about war or disaster profiteers. we are talking yearly price medians)
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Prices actually fluctuate far more up and down than you think. The more years in your dataset the more you will see a positive trend. If you narrow that to yearly you will find it cycles even as it makes that slow march upwards.
Example. Meat in Canada is 15% cheaper this year. Guess what any sane economist is going to know will happen in 3 years? Meat will start to rise as people migrate to the cheaper option to feed their families. Capitalism will always have a natural trade cycle.

What you think is a cost in warehouses actually isn't. Inflation is a FAR more complex subject. Goods and currency increase mainly due to demand push and population growth. The more a good exists and the greater its impact on someones lives the more people who don't have that good want that good. That is the primary increase you will see. The cost increases for warehouses are mostly neutral and have been for the last 50 years. While they do get more expensive to run over time that is mostly due to the WORKERS themselves getting more expensive... which is again part of that demand push inflation effect. Even automation costs haven't really impacted the warehouse world anywhere near as much as you think. The long term savings actually end up making them more efficient since machines really don't have a demand push(yet).

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Ok boring parts over lets address this point:

In the specific context of X4, such discount practices do not fit with the overall economy model. You want to make the major profits then the only way you are going to do so is by investing in production facilities and managing them appropriately. Leave things to the AI and without appropriate planning such facilities are likely to run at a loss due to the automated pricing strategy being at least a little too simplistic and not giving due consideration to manufacturing/production costs.

The economy of X4 is "stuttering" not "cycling". All trades happen within a very narrow band that typically keeps prices near their lowest points for almost every single trade. In the X4 trade world basically no trader ever even attempts to buy a good from a factory that isn't full. Exceptions exist yes but for the majority of the time, this is true.

A discount of 5% for goods trades over 35,000m3 would cause no current production station in X4 to lose money excepting of course the resource tier at the bottom which already loses money. Just for a horror fact for you... Most stations would still be profitable at MINIMUM PRICE SETTINGS if you gave a 30% discount for sales over 35,000m3. Now you can see why I really REALLY want to tweak production eh?
The TLDR is it would only enhance player trades(or AI if you wanted them to trade like this too) and have precisely ZERO impact on the overall economy as it currently stands. It would most certainly not cause any sort of economic collapse or harm.

Honestly, if you wanted to make the price scheme actually interesting a simple random time period scalar adjustment would be interesting and low cost. It would certainly force people to diversify goods and pay attention to the market if they really wanted to trade(even station trade). (Just so we stay on the same page I mean a system which selects its current range within a larger range. IE Quantum tubs have a price range of 150. Right now that's between 225 and 375. If that range remained 150 but would randomly slide up or down a price range of 175 and 425 once a "year" it would certainly allow for losses to occur!.. and great proffitssss.. )

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On an offside discussion, I actually agree with you for the most part that the mogel point of view should be centric on stations. I still think a bit of trade segregation paired with some production tweaks would drastically help the economy in the long run though. Allowing the player to build routes isn't against the foundation model. If you consider a decentralized production style it makes very good sense. What about the player who wishes to mine in sector X and produce in sector Y? The tools are.. lacking. You can make it work but it would be nice to have the option since this is the foundation of a players world.. not a structured sandbox required to be played a single way.

[Sam L.R. Griffiths]

/snip

I know full well what warehouses in the real world are about and used for... there are many different operational circumstances and considerations but...

Bespoke warehouses are unnecessary in X4 due to the modular nature of stations, storage can be added to suit the station. For example: I have a number of ship yards (some with ship related production modules but not all) and ALL of them have 10+ million tonnes of storage for the resources/produced goods (some have >100 million tonnes of storage). My other smaller stations have varying smaller amounts of storage but most of them are not necessarily intended to be profit/production centres.

Trading in X4 is based on a very simple supply and demand model, not as simple as say Elite, Freelancer, and similar but it is still a VERY simple model when compared with real-world economy models. Trying to apply real world based economy model reasoning to X4 is fundamentally flawed and IMO ultimately wrong. Price fluctuations in the real world happen for MANY different reasons but ultimately ends-up being an upwards trend over time, just look at the cost-of-living metrics for the past 40+ years to see that (there are other factors too that prove this point). There are cases were older products (and designs) lose value too but the factors associated with that do not really apply in the context of X4's economy. Overall, what happens in the real-world can not be legitimately directly mapped on to a game like X4 - the economy model in such games is just too simplistic for such mappings in anything more than a VERY limited context - ware pricing and warehouses is not such a context.

As for no trading happening with factories that are not full, alot depends on stations but what you are trying to claim as fact is far from being universally true - ALOT depends on the precise universe state but I do have (and have always had) factories that are overproducing relative to demand and factories that are under producing relative to demand. There is nothing wrong with this being the case since the player has the means to affect both supply and demand through their own build projects.

I disagree with your proposed goals in the context of Vanilla X4, X4 is not just a trading-flight/fleet simulator - building is also a part of it, and arguably are the focus of the fundamental design. The current pricing models do allow for stations to operate at a loss and I see no good reason to exasperate the issue with what you are proposing. I disagree that making the pricing model more flexible would address anything of value - there is nothing stopping you from experimenting with your theories via mods though.

If you are having trouble making profit trading in X4 (even early on) then it is not entirely unexpected but the problem is not insurmountable... the motto of the X-series is Trade-Fight-Build-Think and while aspects of the game can seem challenging at times, normally with a bit of thought there are other options that allow you to beat the challenges. X4 (as with most X-Series games) is a title that really requires alot of time and patience BUT there are at least a few ways to make lots of money in the early game in order to get started with trading and building.

My point about trade routes is that they are generally speaking unnecessary and superfluous - comparable goals can be achieved by other means with a bit of thought.