CAG, CLS & Trading station question.

Cerezoss · Post by **Cerezoss** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 19:27

Hey guys, I've recently started playing X3: Terran Conflict and I'm loving it so far, I'm 144 hours in, flying in my little Panther with Cutlass+Scimitar wing, building complexes and whatnot.

Now, I've been looking for quite a while now (I googled and browsed the forums) but ultimately did not find what I was looking for, so I hope someone here can help me or direct me to a forum posts which explains.

Now, here's the deal:
I remember reading somewhere that if you place a trading station in the unknown sector behind Xenon 534 and put it's product price on maximum that there would be loads of traders buying your product for nearly any proce because there's actual demand somewhere.

Now, in my case, if this is true then I don't want to exploit this in a way that I can ask maximum price for my products but right now I have a Firefly Missile complex (17 firefly factories) partially running on CLS freighters because I have to manually sell them to an Equipment Dock or trading station- they're not being bought anywhere in my game!
The location might be a little inconvenient too; it's in Aladna Hill.

So, I'm not sure whether or not placing a trading station in that specific sector would work since both stations are mine and the game might have a way of safeguarding so that the AI isn't fooled.
I'm just trying to find a way to unload (sell) my product automatically and not have to (regularly!) check my TL to see if it's filled up on missiles so I can sell them.

While I haven't (yet) tried CAG's, I'd like to ask what the difference is between a CAG and CLS, googling the question doesn't come u with a straight answer, or maybe I'm just too much of a dense model flocker to simply grasp the difference- I've only just managed to understand how CLS works.

Anyhow, this concludes my questions, sorry if these have come up before, though I really tried to make sure that I didn't ask a question which answer was easily found.

Thanks in advance!

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 21:27

Wherever you read that it isn't true. NPC traders do not pay over average price. Such a trading station setup will create an unmet demand point so they will buy unlimited quantities, but only if you keep your price at average minus one.

It would create demand for firefly missiles, and I don't think there is any otherwise. So you could use that to get NPC traders buying your missiles if you price them right.

Post by **Nanook** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 22:20

There's one other flaw in that plan. Xenon sector 534 is huge, and the Xenon can and do fly all over it. I've occasionally been able to leisurely fly through it to that unknown sector completely unmolested, so NPC's could do the same. And that means your trading station would most likely fill up given enough time.

Cerezoss · Post by **Cerezoss** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 22:37

@Timsup: I have actually tried it just a few minutes ago, I priced the missiles in the station at avarage price (224) and later set it to maximum price and even set my complex at the lowest price (174 I believe) and the traders just wouldn't come.
Also, thanks for elaborating that NPC's don't buy above avarage, I can use that to help my CLS' along better and make more profits.

@Nanook: I realise that, but since Aladna Hill is 18 sectors away from target destination, I figured it would take a massive amount of time before anything got there anyway, even if they managed to get through Xenon 534.
Right now my Fighter Rank sits at Master Chief and the horror that spawns in Xenon sectors frightens me quite a bit, though I'm not sure if my fight rank is actually linked to the amount of carnage spawned in Xenon sectors.

Anyhow, I'm not sure what I did wrong, my missile prices were ludicrously low at one point and my Trading Station was buying at ludicrously high prices, but it just wouldn't budge.

I'm starting to think it's just a really poor location to have put it.

Post by **Nanook** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 22:53

Cerezoss wrote:... though I'm not sure if my fight rank is actually linked to the amount of carnage spawned in Xenon sectors...

It's not. The only effect your combat rank has is on the number and type of enemies generated for missions, both plot and generic. Other than that, it's just normal day-to-day stuff you're seeing in the Xenon sectors. Lot's of 'carnage' is often linked to the game's GoD engine spawning lots of NPC traders when it sees a demand for a certain item in some area of the universe, in response to the destruction NPC traders elsewhere in the game. If these hordes of traders have to cross Xenon sectors to get to the markets, you'll see this carnage. Xenon 347 and 472 are good examples of this behaviour.

The game tends to keep a relatively fixed number of ships of all types constantly in the game. So if you see very little traffic or very few pirates in some areas, most likely the game has spawned them somewhere else. In the case of pirates, most respawns, especially of capital ships, tend to occur the Maelstrom to Gaian Star region. Look there if you don't see a lot of pirates in the 'normal' pirate sectors. Similar things occur for the Xenon.

@Nanook: I realise that, but since Aladna Hill is 18 sectors away from target destination, I figured it would take a massive amount of time before anything got there anyway, even if they managed to get through Xenon 534.
Right now my Fighter Rank sits at Master Chief and the horror that spawns in Xenon sectors frightens me quite a bit, though I'm not sure if my fight rank is actually linked to the amount of carnage spawned in Xenon sectors.

From Aladna Hill, they'd have to travel through two other Xenon sectors first, X347 and X472. Those lie in the most direct route from Aladna Hill to X534. With that in mind, you could build your trading station in Thynn's Abyss and have the same results.

Cerezoss · Post by **Cerezoss** » Wed, 2. Jul 14, 23:07

Nanook wrote:
Cerezoss wrote:... though I'm not sure if my fight rank is actually linked to the amount of carnage spawned in Xenon sectors...
It's not. The only effect your combat rank has is on the number and type of enemies generated for missions, both plot and generic. Other than that, it's just normal day-to-day stuff you're seeing in the Xenon sectors. Lot's of 'carnage' is often linked to the game's GoD engine spawning lots of NPC traders when it sees a demand for a certain item in some area of the universe, in response to the destruction NPC traders elsewhere in the game. If these hordes of traders have to cross Xenon sectors to get to the markets, you'll see this carnage. Xenon 347 and 472 are good examples of this behaviour.

The game tends to keep a relatively fixed number of ships of all types constantly in the game. So if you see very little traffic or very few pirates in some areas, most likely the game has spawned them somewhere else. In the case of pirates, most respawns, especially of capital ships, tend to occur the Maelstrom to Gaian Star region. Look there if you don't see a lot of pirates in the 'normal' pirate sectors. Similar things occur for the Xenon.

@Nanook: I realise that, but since Aladna Hill is 18 sectors away from target destination, I figured it would take a massive amount of time before anything got there anyway, even if they managed to get through Xenon 534.
Right now my Fighter Rank sits at Master Chief and the horror that spawns in Xenon sectors frightens me quite a bit, though I'm not sure if my fight rank is actually linked to the amount of carnage spawned in Xenon sectors.
From Aladna Hill, they'd have to travel through two other Xenon sectors first, X347 and X472. Those lie in the most direct route from Aladna Hill to X534. With that in mind, you could build your trading station in Thynn's Abyss and have the same results.

I could put it in Thynn's Abyss, I have to carefully watch in my encyclopedia where they're sold as well.
The route as it were now (with the station in the unknown sector) the shortest route was throught Matikhvah's Fate going round to Family Whi and then ultimately to the unknown sector, so the only sector other than X534 would be the pirate sector.
I'll see if puting the station in Thynn's Abyss has a positive effect on my sales when I'm (finally) done with the Final Fury plot, if it doesn't, well, I'll just have to periodically manually sell the missiles.
Thanks for helping me out.

Also just tried out the CAG, pretty nifty thing that, I'm going to use it a lot more often in the future for a few of my planned food complexes and some as universal traders.

zazie · Post by **zazie** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 14:15

Timsup2nothin wrote:Wherever you read that it isn't true. NPC traders do not pay over average price.

Sorry, but you are wrong. NPC traders buy way above average price if the demand of the ware exists. They are allowed to LOSE money

.

Some examples:
In all of my X3TC-games I put NavSats in every sector (well, almost; not in Xenon Core Sectors). That's way I start as soon as possible my own NavSat-production. But often the stock as always empty, in some cases even after raising the price to the max ! At long term I sold hundreds of satellites at about 400 cr above average.

Another "evergreen": MicroChips in Bluish Snout. Two factories in a small complex - and I sold MCs at highest price. The market was only saturated when I had so many MK3-Traders that they took over the MC-market from the NPC-traders and sold the MC-overproduction after the HUB-plot.

And yes, the buyers were NPC-traders

Cerezoss · Post by **Cerezoss** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 17:51

Thanks for your imput, Zazie, I have a follow up question for you;

In my specific scenario, where I had placed a trading station which had the product of the firefly missile set maximum price.
As far as I understand, this price goes for both buying and selling, so in my case I would suspect that my station had demand for 1249 missiles and was willing to buy them at maximum price, yet, no trader was buying my wares.

Finally, the prices were as following:
Trading station price: 224 (avarage)
Selling price at complex: 177 (lowest)

Yet, again, no traders buying while I kept the price like this for 3 in game hours (on SETA 1000%).

So, my question is; do you perhaps know where I went wrong and why traders aren't buying from this particular complex?

Timsup2nothin · Post by **Timsup2nothin** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 18:50

zazie wrote:
Timsup2nothin wrote:Wherever you read that it isn't true. NPC traders do not pay over average price.
Sorry, but you are wrong. NPC traders buy way above average price if the demand of the ware exists. They are allowed to LOSE money .

Some examples:
In all of my X3TC-games I put NavSats in every sector (well, almost; not in Xenon Core Sectors). That's way I start as soon as possible my own NavSat-production. But often the stock as always empty, in some cases even after raising the price to the max ! At long term I sold hundreds of satellites at about 400 cr above average.

Another "evergreen": MicroChips in Bluish Snout. Two factories in a small complex - and I sold MCs at highest price. The market was only saturated when I had so many MK3-Traders that they took over the MC-market from the NPC-traders and sold the MC-overproduction after the HUB-plot.

And yes, the buyers were NPC-traders

There might be some hard wired exceptions, and microchips and nav sats are good candidates to be among them. Tech traders do strange things. If they are coded in as 'buy no matter what' exceptions though I can't see that it is demand dependent. There is never demand for microchips or satellites at max price unless the player is buying them. Sat buyers are all docks that pay average, and chips are never a primary resource so they can only go as high as the secondary resource max.

Cerezoss · Post by **Cerezoss** » Thu, 3. Jul 14, 21:38

Found the thread in which I found the hint about the trading station:
http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=297942

I still don't know what I did wrong. :I