Station auto credit transfer?

[CaptainRAVE]

Does this actually work for anyone? My stations continue to accumulate credits many times their minimum operating budget. They are fully stocked with resources and drones. Not one sends me credits, I always end up manually transferring.

[dholmstr]

Same here. Can anyone tell me if it works and if so, were can I set up it up (or is it completely automatic)?

[Vondor]

You have to do it manually.

Yes, would be a good feature.

[CaptainRAVE]

I thought an early patch added this as a feature, but maybe not then?

[nalim27]

Hello
Actually it works, but in very strange way. I has been in same situation and this fix helps:

1. In player empire menu select Station budget screen
2. For all money generating stations transfer all station money to your account. (it is probably better to keep some station budget but... It is much easier to transfer all)
3. Now every stations give 10 or 15 millions.
4. Wait a while.... And when station budget will have surplus bigger than you gave them then similar amount will be automatically transfered to you - you will see it in Upkeep log. So you will receive periodically 10 or 15 millions.

Please do not ask me why devepolers think's that this is normal and logical feature.

P. S: This is not mine fix - I found it somewhere in this forum.

[Buzz2005]

sometimes it worked for me but I do it manually since sometimes it won't

I set it up in manage founds but it stops working after a while

[Falcrack]

What they need, is a simple way for players to manually set two numbers:
-a minimum amount of credits at the station, where if station goes below that threshold, credits are automatically transferred from the player account to the station account.
-a maximum amount of credits at the station, where if station goes above that threshold, credits are automatically transferred from the station account to the player account.

[CaptainRAVE]

Hello
Actually it works, but in very strange way. I has been in same situation and this fix helps:

1. In player empire menu select Station budget screen
2. For all money generating stations transfer all station money to your account. (it is probably better to keep some station budget but... It is much easier to transfer all)
3. Now every stations give 10 or 15 millions.
4. Wait a while.... And when station budget will have surplus bigger than you gave them then similar amount will be automatically transfered to you - you will see it in Upkeep log. So you will receive periodically 10 or 15 millions.

Please do not ask me why devepolers think's that this is normal and logical feature.

P. S: This is not mine fix - I found it somewhere in this forum.

I will try that, thank you.

[MarvinTheMartian]

What they need, is a simple way for players to manually set two numbers:
-a minimum amount of credits at the station, where if station goes below that threshold, credits are automatically transferred from the player account to the station account.
-a maximum amount of credits at the station, where if station goes above that threshold, credits are automatically transferred from the station account to the player account.

I suggested similar a while ago. there's a 3rd number though and that's min transfer amount, no point in transferring 3Cr just because balance is 10,000,003Cr could probably hard code a % of either low or high settings.

[CaptainRAVE]

It still isn’t working for me. I followed the steps above. Say, for example I have a station with a minimum operating budget of 80 million, so I emptied the credits, then transfer 85 million. The station now has 200 million, but it still hasn’t auto transferred. I’ll try leaving it for longer.

Edit: it’s finally working! I guess with such big complexes they need a sizeable surplus to transfer.

[RodentofDoom]

iirc it's supposed to work as follows

Station manager reports required budget @ 10,000,000
You Set station account @ 15,000,000
When the station accumulates 60,000,000
The manager transfers 30,000,000 to player account

S/M, L & XL Maintenance OR Fabrication facilities STOP account transfers happening
A station with any of the above modules attached will just accumulate money indefinitely

[DaMuncha]

That is so asinine. If I set a max station account to 15 mill, then it should start paying me after 15 mill, NOT 60 mill. Thats just dumb. No wonder it wasnt working.

[CaptainRAVE]

That is so asinine. If I set a max station account to 15 mill, then it should start paying me after 15 mill, NOT 60 mill. Thats just dumb. No wonder it wasnt working.

I agree. My station has a minimum budget of 80 million, so I give it 85 million. It starts transferring 30-40 million chunks when it gets to 220 million. Bizzare!

[Pares]

So If I want my self sufficient station that is only selling products to only keep 1,000,000 credits, and transfer credits every time it crosses the 2,000,000 credit limit (meaning that if it crosses the 2,000,000 credit limit, it "resets" its budget to 1,000,000 credits by sending the remained to me), what should I set? What does the operation budget even mean? My station doesn't need even 1,000,000 credits to function properly, not to mention the suggested multi ten million operation budget that it shows. The mechanism described above is still not clear to me. Is it tied to the operation budget?

[RodentofDoom]

It's done the way I described above for a very simple reason.

If the station manager reports that it is 10m to run the station
That is the money needed to maximise the stock levels of all the resources that can be stored with the station whilst doing nothing with them.
As soon as the station starts building products, the volume of resources drops.
If products are not being sold, the station does not have the funds to purchase more resources and production grinds to a halt.

A 10m minimum needs 20m to run effectively
10m to purchase the initial resources
10m to purchase subsequent resources pending product sales.
By using 4x the player setting (40m in this case), the station is able to trade both products and for resources whilst maintaining an efficient AND continuous production system.

Transferring funds at 4x the fund limit set by the player also serves to reduce the number of message entries in the log
Fewer and less frequent log entries are something to be very much desired.

As a final observation
If you need money transfers from station accounts that badly …
You're doing it wrong.

[Nort The Fragrent]

Station fund management is absurd.
It worked so well in X3, why have es not implemented the same for X4.

When you get into the billions, transferring small amounts is hopeless. As it jumps in such huge amounts.
I now have a station I use as a Billions dump. So my working fund is kept to around 1 Billion or less.
I still transfer funds manually, as it gives me something to do ! And I can see what stations need attention.

Again es , spend more time on guns and sparklers, than the fundamentals of the game.

[ubuntufreakdragon]

Well it depends on the script in use for the station traders, a good script should be able to run a well planed 10m station with 2m budget, my fixed script achieves this, the vanilla version not.

[Imperial Good]

Feature works perfectly from what I can tell. My warf/shipyard transfers 200M credits to me about twice per hour.

As people have mentioned here, the station needs a large surplus for it to transfer. If you set the operating budget to 100M, then it will only start transferring money around the 300M mark.

If your station does not produce a lot of profit per hour, then consider reducing the amount of storage allocated to inputs and intermediate wares as well as their buy limits. This should allow you to lower your operating budget and hence make the station transfer credits more frequently.

[Pares]

It's done the way I described above for a very simple reason.

If the station manager reports that it is 10m to run the station
That is the money needed to maximise the stock levels of all the resources that can be stored with the station whilst doing nothing with them.
As soon as the station starts building products, the volume of resources drops.
If products are not being sold, the station does not have the funds to purchase more resources and production grinds to a halt.

A 10m minimum needs 20m to run effectively
10m to purchase the initial resources
10m to purchase subsequent resources pending product sales.
By using 4x the player setting (40m in this case), the station is able to trade both products and for resources whilst maintaining an efficient AND continuous production system.

Transferring funds at 4x the fund limit set by the player also serves to reduce the number of message entries in the log

What if I have a station, that only needs mineable resources like, silicon, ore, helium, hydrogen and methane, and is perfectly well supplied by my own mining ships, so the station basically needs 0 operation budget? Why should I store tens or hundreds of millions of credits in a station that doesn't need them? Why wouldn't it be more simple if I could set two limits, how much credits to keep and at what credit amount to transfer? This whole mechanic you described is not intuitive at all, it is convulated and is completely hidden from the player.

Fewer and less frequent log entries are something to be very much desired.

Let the player be the judge of that.

As a final observation
If you need money transfers from station accounts that badly …
You're doing it wrong.

Yeah, how is it bad that I want to be able to set how much money and at what interval it transfers to my account? How is it bad that I want my complex to transfer money more regularly?

[Bzar]

If the station manager reports that it is 10m to run the station
That is the money needed to maximise the stock levels of all the resources that can be stored with the station whilst doing nothing with them.
As soon as the station starts building products, the volume of resources drops.
If products are not being sold, the station does not have the funds to purchase more resources and production grinds to a halt.

A 10m minimum needs 20m to run effectively
10m to purchase the initial resources
10m to purchase subsequent resources pending product sales.
By using 4x the player setting (40m in this case), the station is able to trade both products and for resources whilst maintaining an efficient AND continuous production system.

These points are fine about budget vs resources, to prevent a station running out. However, I feel the player should be allowed to make that call like setting storage allocation. Setting storage allocation below your stations maximum is important to get it to make money short term while it accumulates end products. There isn't any point letting it default to say, 100k of a final product if you only make 500 of that product per hour. It would take far too long to fill up and reach the auto price point where traders will buy from you. It is better to set storage to ~1000 have some product selling short term to bring in cash to enable you to re-invest in improvements to improve production speed. This will then benefit you in the long term. Of course, the alternative is manual price setting to achieve the same goal. Either way, the player can optimise better than the fire and forget option.

Transferring funds at 4x the fund limit set by the player also serves to reduce the number of message entries in the log
Fewer and less frequent log entries are something to be very much desired.

This doesn't work as intended then since there aren't sufficient filters in the log. Transfers in the log are under the upkeep section. However, so are ship sales from yards. I have an S/M yard that can build 20 fighters simultaneously. In my current game it spits out multiple sales notifications every minute as it is almost continuously producting ships due to factor wars. It is impossible for me to find the surplus transfers most of the times for my stations because of this. Again, I think there need to be better player filter options for the log to find useful information.