SOLVED - [TC] CAG, Sell wares down to % & Freighter Cargo % Q's

General discussions about the games by Egosoft including X-BTF, XT, X², X³: Reunion, X³: Terran Conflict and X³: Albion Prelude.

Moderator: Moderators for English X Forum

Post Reply
IcarusII
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue, 19. Jul 11, 19:57
x3tc

SOLVED - [TC] CAG, Sell wares down to % & Freighter Cargo % Q's

Post by IcarusII » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 21:27

Hi guys,

Im building another complex. A 1Mj complex in argon prime. Im starting small (3 1mj fabs and the associated food) and bringing in ecells from NPC stations.

Simaltaneously im starting to build up an ore mine network in Ore Belt as a tiny effort towards HUB plot (which I know nothing about and havent started yet, but lots of advice says start now so I am). And this ore mine network (held together by CLS) is where my ore for the 1mj shield fab will come from.

my question is this:

I will be moving ore from my mining netowrk to the shield fab using CLS1 homebased at the shield fab and seeing the ore mines as 'suppliers'.

Now I know that my shield fab wont use anything like as much ore as im producing at the moment. So i have a CAG on the single high yield ore mine i have who gets the ecells in for the mine.

In terms of the CAG he is set to ensure the mine gets up to 90% full on ecells (which it is) but only sell DOWN to 80% on the ore. that way any surplus over 80% full should be sold off by the CAG, but there will always be ore for my CLS to collect when the 1mj shield fab needs it.

my CAG isnt behaving right. Hes set to trader, with the settings noted above, and hes keeping the ecells topped off as he should but he keeps selling my ore to about 5% of stock. Whilst i dont mind the profit (hes selling it at max price) i now want the station to only sell of surplus above 80%. hes basically selling everything.

the only thing I can think of is the poorly understoon setting (by me) of: "Sell Products Freighter Cargo Bay" which is currently set to 30%. My CAG is a Mistral SF with a max capacity at the moment of 13k.

So is the freighter cargo bay % messing up my dont sell below 80% thing?

My understanding of the Sell Products Frieghter Cargo bay (set at 30%) is that if the frieghter can fill its cargo bay 30% full of ore, it will do so, and then sell it, irrelevant of whether this drives my total stock below the 80% Sell Products threshold ive set.

If so, I understand my error - but how do I stop it? Setting it to 100% makes no difference as he just waites until he can fill up the whole cargo bay and then sells everything!

Help!

Thanks
IcarusII
Last edited by IcarusII on Sun, 28. Aug 11, 23:12, edited 1 time in total.

Merroc
Posts: 5920
Joined: Mon, 16. Feb 04, 20:01
x3tc

Post by Merroc » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 21:46

I am wondering the same thing here.

If I read the manual that goes with the CAG, it says that if it can sell products, it will, because sitting still is worse, profit wise. Which to me is silly as well. Why have this option in the first place then (the sell down to xx%)?

Vim Razz
Posts: 1842
Joined: Tue, 2. Nov 10, 02:20
x4

Post by Vim Razz » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 22:08

I used to have a similar problem with CLS 1, until a few folks in another thread a week or two ago talked about set the Frieght Value to 101% to prevent the ship from over-drawing the source. It works beutifuly.

I havent tested whether it works with CAG or not (probably will tonight, now that it's on my mind), but I'm assuming the CAG script is similar enough in structure to the CLS script that it might be worth a shot.

kerusker
Posts: 14
Joined: Sun, 19. Sep 10, 14:55

Post by kerusker » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 22:16

First, set your Min-Cargobay percentage to exactly 101%.
That's the only value above 100% the Cag accepts.
This will stop him selling continuously, as he will never be able to load more than 100%.
Second, get a smaller Frighter... the Cag will now only sell when the stock at your Ore-mine is above 80%, but unfortunately will still load as much as he can sell.
The Superfrighter can load quite much, maybe the whole stock at your mine?

regards,
Kerusker

Merroc
Posts: 5920
Joined: Mon, 16. Feb 04, 20:01
x3tc

Post by Merroc » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 22:20

So, when that value is at 101% it will load as much as it can sell at the target station? And not stop selling because it cant load 101%?

While you guys are at it. How can i set up my intermediaries to have my CAGs actively trade them (buy at min, sell at max)?

IcarusII
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue, 19. Jul 11, 19:57
x3tc

Post by IcarusII » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 22:52

Ok, this sounds workable.

So if you set the "Sell Products Freighter Cargo bay" to 101%, you are essentially telling it to:

Try and load 101% of your cargo bay with ore cells. It cant.
then wait until stock of station is at 80%. So it waits.
if stock of mine hits 80% then you can load up. But it will load 100% of its cargo bay.

Which as suggested on a SFXL, with 13000 cargo is a lot. ore takes up a volume of 8 so this translates to 13000/8 = 1625 pieces of ore.

May L ore mine can hold 4160, so it will wipe out approx 1/4 of my mine....from 4160 down to 2535. This is down to a stock level of 61%.

Im actually fine with this as it will now just vary between 60 and 80%. If i set it to wait till 90% it will vary between 90 and 70% which is better.

problem solved I think. Thanks very much guys. i wanted the Mistral SF in place as its better for the e-cell delivery.

IcarusII
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue, 19. Jul 11, 19:57
x3tc

Post by IcarusII » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 23:01

Merroc: to have your cags trade in intermediates, I believe you need to do the following:

In station settings (property menu, select station, adjust station parameters) - you go to pretty much the bottom where it says 2intermediate product trading" and cycle through until it says "buy and sell".

you dont hit return or ok, just make sure you leave it at buy & sell. Leave the menu and Go back and chek the setting is still there.

Once thats set, go into you CAG's menu and go to trader duties
under that menu i set:

Purchase Intermediate Products to 5% (this means it will only buy them if the stations intermediate product stock drops below 5%). You may want other settings if your station is LOSING intermediates and you want to bolster them with a CAG.

Sell Intermediate Products to 80%. This means that when the total stock of that particulat intermediate product hits 80% in your station the CAG will sell off the surplus. good for stations that are overprodicing intermediates.

As for the price, you can set the minimums you want the CAG to sell for in the Adjust station Parameters. Remember the CAg will always try to sell for the highest price (but never sell below the price you set) and buy for the lowest price, but never above the price you set).

This can lead to the CAG staying in standby if you have set it impossible targets (ie sell ecells for 18CR minimum, but there are no factories prepared to buy for that minimum price within its jumprange.)

IcarusII

Merroc
Posts: 5920
Joined: Mon, 16. Feb 04, 20:01
x3tc

Post by Merroc » Sun, 28. Aug 11, 23:38

Oh, so I went about it the wrong way about. I set the buy uptill high and the sell down to low.

I'll try tomorrow, thanks!

Vim Razz
Posts: 1842
Joined: Tue, 2. Nov 10, 02:20
x4

Post by Vim Razz » Mon, 29. Aug 11, 00:54

IcarusII wrote:So if you set the "Sell Products Freighter Cargo bay" to 101%, you are essentially telling it to:

Try and load 101% of your cargo bay with ore cells. It cant.
then wait until stock of station is at 80%. So it waits.
if stock of mine hits 80% then you can load up. But it will load 100% of its cargo bay.
What it seems to do is "break" the part of the script that handles cargo % filling, so that the decision to load is made only on the basis of avaliable materials.

So with CLS, for example, you sometimes get ships making runs with only a few items -- like 5 or 10 -- but the ship wont load past the minimum station %.

I haven't had time to play with it with CAG yet, but from kerusker's description it sounds like the ship will simply load if the avaliable station % is above minimum, rather than loading whenever it had a minimum frieght load avaliable.

Merroc
Posts: 5920
Joined: Mon, 16. Feb 04, 20:01
x3tc

Post by Merroc » Mon, 29. Aug 11, 10:52

IcarusII wrote:Sell Intermediate Products to 80%. This means that when the total stock of that particulat intermediate product hits 80% in your station the CAG will sell off the surplus. good for stations that are overprodicing intermediates.
After re-reading, that's not what I want.

I want my cags to go out, buy intermediates for next to nothing, store them in my station and then when they can be sold for loads, sell them. Not just selling overproduction.

But just now I thought of perhaps a way, requiring two cags. One set at buying till 80%, other set to buying to 20%, selling down to 20%. I suppose that makes sure that one will go out and buy, and the other go out and sell, right?

User avatar
perkint
Posts: 5191
Joined: Wed, 6. Nov 02, 20:31
x3tc

Post by perkint » Mon, 29. Aug 11, 13:39

Well, I think, so long as trading intermediates is on, having one CAG set to 80% will do that anyway. He'll buy cheap until stock is over 80% and then sell high whilst it is...

Tim
Struggling to find something from the forums - Google it!!! :D

IcarusII
Posts: 124
Joined: Tue, 19. Jul 11, 19:57
x3tc

Post by IcarusII » Mon, 29. Aug 11, 15:47

Merroc:

ive never tried this but it might work theoretically:

Set one CAg to purchaser.
Set one cag to salesman.

Set the purchase intermediate products to say, 75%. This will mean the purchaser CAG will go out and buy inters as cheap as poss until the station is 75% full.

Set the sell intermediate products to say 15%. This will mean the salesman gag will try to sell your stocks of inters down to 15%.

The two CAGs will compete i think. One buying cheap and other selling high, one trying to stock you up and one trying to empty you out.

dont forget though that the purchaser CAG prioritises resources over inters and the salesman cag will prioritise products over inters.

Inters will always be their secondary concerns when their primarys are sorted.

Let me know if it works lol.

Merroc
Posts: 5920
Joined: Mon, 16. Feb 04, 20:01
x3tc

Post by Merroc » Mon, 29. Aug 11, 16:52

Yeah, that's the idea I had this morning as well. I haven't had enough time to check yet. Got 5 cags (well two are training with cls2 atm) to that complex, 1 shopper, shopping till 80%, 1 salesman, selling down to 20% and 3 traders at 50%. It seems to be working, they're leaving the EC alone as its quite empty.

If they prioritse products and resources over intermediates, I'm all in favor.

The only "downside" is with prices all at average (so everything gets bought under average and sold over average = never a loss, at best 0 profit). Is that when there are barely any producers and/or customers. So the shopper might be busy buying at average, and the salesman selling at average, resulting in 0 profit, but money spent on pilot payments.

Infekted
Posts: 2925
Joined: Mon, 1. Mar 10, 19:47
x3tc

Post by Infekted » Mon, 29. Aug 11, 16:57

Double trade stations/eqdocks/hub.

For example place an EQDock in the hub sector.

Set your buyers to the Hub. Set the buying price that you want in the hub. Have them set to buy the ware up to 100%.

Have a CLS TL docked there loading all of that ware into itself.

Have a random CLS ship set to transfer any of that ware from that TL into a TL docked at the EQ Dock.

Have that TL set to unload the ware into the EQ Dock.

Have your seller CAGs set there, and set the selling price you want in the EQ Dock. Have them set to sell the ware down to 0%.

Gives perfect price control, and as a plus you have FAT TL storage of said ware too.

Post Reply

Return to “X Trilogy Universe”