Is this normal or tied to the beta?

[zakaluka]

I'm noticing it's hard for me to get my refining stations to sell their outputs right now. I remember having some difficulty before, but not this much. Is this an issue that should go in beta feedback as a bug report? Or is this also going on like I'm going to lay out below, in the live game?

1. My station isn't using its traders to sell refined metals, only silicon wafers. Even though we're doing partial hauls of silicon wafers, while refined metals fill up the storage enough to stop production.
https://imgur.com/Ke3pzZl
2. So I figured, let's just give him a LOT more traders than he should need, does that do it? Well, it didn't. They're still only moving silicon wafers, while storage for refined metals completely fills up. I only sell refined metals when an NPC ship comes to buy from me.
https://imgur.com/sQwvsuR
3. Check their inventories, I'm getting many very tiny shipments, this one only had 8 wafers. 8! As, refined metal production is stopped because of storage limits. Not a single one of them was carrying refined metals.
https://imgur.com/KapqWmc
4. Check transaction log. This same boa hasn't picked up refined metals once. Just a lot of small shipments of wafers.
https://imgur.com/haPJZSS
5. These traders have a range of 4 (4 star manager). There are plenty of places they could be delivering full cargos of refined metals, just 2 jumps away. Here are 2 different runs they could sell a full cargo of metals with.
https://imgur.com/qG4g709

So wtf? I remember it being annoying to sell some tier 1 goods, but I always found a way. Right now I have to manually set up repeat orders with a lot of different endpoints. Is this a new shortcoming, or an old one? Should I put it on a beta bug report?

[Pesanur]

Is for this that I prefer to build dedicated refineries.

The problem is that the traders\managers see as a better deal to sell a few silicon wafers at high price that selling a full refined metals shipment at medium price, even is the total profits of selling the full shipment are by far higher.

[Buzz2005]

you can manually set that only refined are sold

[zakaluka]

you can manually set that only refined are sold

That's a station wide setting. So wouldn't I just have exactly the same problem in another two hours?

[Lord Crc]

A workaround could be to set up a simple trade station, just docking and storage, and set it to trade refined metal, restricting buying from your stations only.

[zakaluka]

A workaround could be to set up a simple trade station, just docking and storage, and set it to trade refined metal, restricting buying from your stations only.

UGH
Yes, this had not occurred to me. Thanks.

Actually I can do this for *every* good that meets such a limitation, so it is not such a burden. It just expands the balance sheet, and creates a new incentive to put all of my stations very close together.

[darkstar12]

you can manually set that only refined are sold

That's a station wide setting. So wouldn't I just have exactly the same problem in another two hours?

You can set individual price and if you want to sell things in the logical overview. You can also make individual trade/blacklists for each ware if you wish.

[zakaluka]

You can set individual price and if you want to sell things in the logical overview. You can also make individual trade/blacklists for each ware if you wish.

If they won't touch the lower priced good, I would need the ability to do this individually on a per-trader basis. But the traders' settings copy straight from the manager. So I don't think this helps.

I am betting traders choose which trade to do by scoring available trades by estimated profit and estimated time to do the trade. But, there is some shortcoming - they never, ever bother to pick up refined metals, even though in one of the examples I showed he could make over 100k per trip with a distance of 2 gates. Instead he chooses to haul 8 silicon wafers to a station in the same system. Clearly the first option is a better use of time, but the game's choice is wrong for some reason.

This is where I wish I was good at modding so I could make a change to the AI scripts. As it is, I can't even figure out how to download Egosoft's file extractor. Instructions I found in the XR forums seem to lead to a broken link.

[darkstar12]

3.3 and even before that allowed for such rules and setup. Do not recall exactly when it came however

Not played any in the current Beta.

However you can lock out selling silicon wafer to those sectors or such. The silicon wafer thing I resolved by just dumping the price to next to nothing. It somehow made the traders sell full cargoholds

[dtpsprt]

Best thing you should do is "upgrade" these stations to the next level, for example put some "Hull Parts" modules along with the Refined metals and have a Hull Part Factory, deleting the Silicon ones and putting some Microchip or Smart Chip along with the Silicon Refineries deleting the Refined Metals.

This way your traders will be selling the (more profitable) 2nd stage resources and also the excess 1st stage. It's the multitude of the 1st stage resources that "baffles" your station Manager. I believe that you have built the Silicon modules first and then the Refined Metals... or, simply, it is a per unit price that is in effect...

[Johnson98]

I had a kinda similar issue with my food production which just didn´t want to sell its scruffin fruits despite running full of those.

I noticed that the station simply didn´t create any sell orders for those, so I disabled the "automatic sell amount" and set it manually instead. Suddenly they were being sold by the station´s subordinates and bought up by other traders.
Maybe try this out before errecting trade stations for excess goods.

[zakaluka]

3.3 and even before that allowed for such rules and setup.[...]

The silicon wafer thing I resolved by just dumping the price to next to nothing.

edit: I discovered I wasn't getting as much from blacklists as I could. But still I can't block trade between one of my traders and some specific stations, or prevent a specific trader from picking up one good. It might be a way to get a small bit more mileage but not much and it's not the job this tool was meant for.

trade rules don't address it. You can only change the behavior of the entire station and all its traders. It won't be enough to make all tier 1 products get sold.

[zakaluka]

Best thing you should do is "upgrade" these stations to the next level, for example put some "Hull Parts" modules along with the Refined metals and have a Hull Part Factory, deleting the Silicon ones and putting some Microchip or Smart Chip along with the Silicon Refineries deleting the Refined Metals.

Yes, I know about creating demand for tier 1 goods by filling demand for tier 2 goods. But there are hull part, claytronics, engine part factories right next door that want to buy my entire stock of refined metals, just the 5 traders I have assigned to selling my tier 1 goods won't go do the trade. I shouldn't need to build the t2 station yet.

That's quite an expensive path to walk down. It takes 5 hull parts and 4 engine parts productions to use up the output of only 3 refined metals factories. That's what, a $20mm price tag (with e-cells, workforce, and defense loaded out) for a new station that's standing in for 2 of those transports ($1-2m) who should be able to get the job done.

No, to make someone sell my production without going to that expensive measure I need a trade station, traders on repeat, or auto-traders. It's very much not a result that should make sense to anyone. At least the trade station approach takes very little setup and doesn't cost much.