Supply factories and stations

[Heemskerk]

Hello,

I just bought some stations. I know I can supply them with primary resources by setting them as a home base for a TS and then sellecht the best buy command.

But will other ships (computer) sell me resources too? Or will I have to do it all by myself? Because at the moment nothing is happening.
I placed my stations next to factories that produce my primary resources.

[jlehtone]

Price.

NPC has Free Traders. They roam around. They decide a ware and then go to buy from the cheapest nearby (some sectors) producer. Once they have a load, they sell to best paying nearby consumer. Rinse and repeat.

As general rule, they consider only producers that offer cheaper than average and consumers that pay more than average.

Your factories basically have to offer top dollar for resources in order to attract NPC Free Traders. If you do pay top dollar, you cannot sell your products very cheap. The NPC Factories can; running at loss all the time does not hurt them.


The Best Buy ship of your factory does look at the factory price too. The factory price is upper limit, like average price is upper limit for the NPC Free Traders. Your ship is likely to find some cheaper source and thus your Factory rarely pays the price that you did set.


The Best Buy is simple. Very simple. Have you installed the Bonuspack?

Bonuspack contains Commercial Agent (CAG). The CAG is Best Buy on steroids. One CAG ship can trade all wares of its homebase, both buy resources and sell products. (Apprentice CAG cannot sell.) CAG has many configurable options too, to fine-tune operation. CAG is as easy to start as the Best Buy.


Your stations do have "Trade with other races" setting. You can change it to "No". Then no NPC Free Trader can trade with that station. By default they can trade. Can, yes, want to ... if the Price is Right.

[RAVEN.myst]

@Heemskerk: I would STRONGLY second the recommendation for using Commerical Agent ("CAG"), available in the Bonus Pack. Being a more sophisticated, powerful behaviour script for your station-bound freighters, it's curious in that it can be either simpler to use than standard commands, or a lot more fine-tuned if you choose - it is entirely up to your preference. The CAG pilots get better with experience, thus improving their efficiency; it's quite conceivable to use 2 CAG pilots to buy 3 resources AND sell the product of a station (but of course, larger complexes will require proportionally more freighters.)

jlehtone's last point, about allowing or denying other races docking privileges is an important one, and related to another important point: Firstly, active trading is always more profitable than passive trading, meaning that if you have freighters exporting to the best prices they can find, you will always make more money than the only average prices you can sell at to passing traffic. Secondly, if you block other races from docking at your station, ALL your products will be sold at the better prices, AND you will avoid your station's parking facilities from getting clogged up by visiting ships squatting there, which can cause your station's operations to grind to a halt (especially if it's a single factory, which can typically only dock 5 ships at a time.)

[Heemskerk]

Just to be sure, I keep my saved games after installing?

[Alan Phipps]

Yes the Bonus Pack (BP) scripts are signed as 'vanilla' and your previous saves will work fine. You will need to reinstall the BP if you ever totally reinstall the game and want to use the previous saves from while you had the BP though.

[Timsup2nothin]

Once you have the bonus pack my recommendation can be found in the guide in my sig. CLS makes the universe go 'round.