X3AP Universe Traders not upgrading their ships - Working as Intended

[wydavies]

I've done a search on the forums and not found anything that matches what is happening. Perhaps I've just not put in the right search terms.

I've used Mk3 trade software since it first appeared as a mod (was that back in X2?) and I was using in X3:AP in my last playthrough and the traders would at random points upgrade their ships.
I've started a new playthrough (with a non-modded version) of X3:AP and my traders are not upgrading their ships. They have been running for a long, long time and not a single upgrade applied, although they are buying combat drones for themselves.
I also had a trader get damaged in an attack and instead of going to a shipyard to repair they just went to the nearest station and messaged me for help.
Have I got some setting wrong or is it a change to their behaviour that I haven't seen mentioned?

[wydavies]

I've now got 18 universe traders, all up to rank 25 (the max) and not one has bought a single cargo space (or any other) upgrade. I'm pretty sure they are meant to randomly upgrade at least the cargo capacity.
The game is unmodded and I've run integrity checks and all is reported fine. Everything else appears to be working properly.
Any clues as to why they aren't upgrading?

[Alan Phipps]

They don't upgrade their ships or cargobay/tunings at all in vanilla. They just buy jumpdrive, drones, e-cells and mosquito defence missiles and do better and smarter trades as the pilots become more experienced. They just fly to a shipyard if damaged (when experienced enough) and do not repair themselves. I think you are thinking of the 3rd party scripts and not the vanilla ones.

There is a documentation pack here which tells you how to implement the sorts of things you want by activating plugins rather than using the stock vanilla scripts.

[Vayde]

@wydavies

Hi there,

If you don't mind going modified please look here for the answer to some of your issues.

http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=314455