HoL and its business

[dholmstr]

So have been playing for while (no need for estimate time,waay to long) and the business of mine is rolling on. Having done many factories and even more ships per factory, did some "surveying" on HoL system. I allready have a few factories there churning out goodies and making money. BUT I've noticed that some wares are hard to find and many NPC factories jsut stands there doing nothing.

Here is the thing, most of those wares DO exist in HoL, several factories ARE building them but nothing is moving as it seems. Yes I have put up factories to "fill the holes" but it really don't help the issue. The wares aren't moving for way to many factories. Like Food Rations (there are again several factories making them) do not get to factories needing them. Chemical Coumpounds, Silicon Wafers and so on.

Now I could make more factories, but to be honest I'm starting to get abit annoyed with "sir we made some cash, you want some?!?!?" dumbass question (plus the way they pay to much and go below budget). Not really fond of it right now.

Another way, that I for the moment do, is to have a trader ship (in my case Lyramecron "the trading" ship with more guns than a carrier) buzzling around doing manual trade. But it does get boring.

So for the punchline and question:
Can the Warehouse building act as my "staging area" for 2-3 trading ships that just move the damn goods around? The way I read about it, it could/should/would do that. But does it really work.
Maybe I should wait for the patch, IF the AI MIGHT get a boost (for love of all the holy persons give better AI) and the NPC would have abit more moving parts.

[Snafu_X3]

I suspect NPC warehouses in HoL may be farming consumables; once the economy tanks there, ware movement may improve (but this is just a guess..)

Certainly you can set up your own warehouses as stockpiles/trade stations as you wish, but there is a major problem WRT their orders: Manglement cannot separate "buy" from "sell" prices: they can't set individual price ranges This leads to ineffectual trading (to put it mildly).. & in some cases to assigned ships being caught in endless loops buying/selling the same wares to their own station

Given the requirement of a 5* Manager to both buy & sell a ware from a warehouse, the above is a glaring hole of missed trade game (plot, tactical, strategy, etc) opportunities (

[dholmstr]

Sounds to me that I'll just wait and see if the patch does some patching on the AI.