[X3TC] Ships fly farther for bad price with remote Buy/Sell Ware for Best Price

[Kondratev]

Hello,

After trying Reunion many years ago and failing to get anywhere, I recently picked up TC and am loving it! I got off to a slow start, but now I'm 40 hours in, have a fleet of several freighters, and got my first Nova.

I have placed Advanced Satellites in the sectors I trade in most. All of my TS ships have the following software:

Trading System Extension
Trade Command Software Mk1
Trade Command Software Mk2
Best Buys Locator
Best Selling Price Locator

I used to use "Fly to Sector" and then confirm the best price myself when the ship arrived, but I'm reaching the point where I can't micromanage everything.

Now I am starting to use "Buy/Sell Ware for Best Price" more often. Sometimes it works fine.

Other times, ships will ignore good deals, and fly far away to make terrible trades. If I stop the command and order it again, it will set its destination to the same place with the bad price.

Example:

I had a Dolphin in Kingdom End. I tell it to buy silicon wafers for the best price within 3 jumps. Thankfully I noticed it was about to dock with the silicon mine in Herron's Nebula and buy a full load for over 500 each.

I stopped the command and saw silicon for 235 in Power Sector. I issued the same command again "Buy silicon wafers at the best price within 3 jumps," and it started to dock in Herron's Nebula again! Power Sector was closer, and selling at half the price, but the ship decided to go one jump farther to buy for a bad price.

This has happened to me several times even with something as simple as a same-sector beef trade. It seems like sometimes the "Buy/Sell Ware for Best Price" commands just bug out with no explanation.

As I said, I have Advanced Satellites in these sectors. Is there some software I'm missing?

[LocTheToker]

I will apologize in advance if this isn't the answer you're hoping for. If you're getting to the point where micromanaging is becoming overwhelming then you may need to reevaluate what types of jobs you want your ships to be doing.

I typically don't have a ton of ships doing simple buy this sell this unless I have some need for moving a specific commodity, or want to improve relations or sector/universe economy.

If I need to move a specific commodity to a specific place for some specific reason I have two ways main ways I do it. The first is using buy ware/sell ware command the other is CLS2.

If I want to improve relations and or universe economy I would use a Trade Mk3 sector/universe trader or CLS2.

If you're more interested in just creating wealth through trading I'm really not an expert, as I typically use combat, missions, and eventually boarding to fund factories to produce goods that can sell themselves. Then I sprinkle some factories around that npc's love e.g. 1mj shields

[ancienthighway]

When traders start on a command, the price at the targeted station may be the best price. By the time the ship gets there though an NPC ship may have beat you to the station. I know CAG, CLS and Mk3 traders will reevaluate after docking if the order can't be filled at fly to another station. I don't know of just buying and selling at best price does so, too. You can find out by letting them land and seeing what happens. The Dolphin (75 m/s) and it's variants (as low as 49 m/s) are among the slowest transports in the game, so there is a good chance of missing best prices often.

If you are taking the time to check prices like this, you really aren't relieving yourself of micromanaging your transports. If you want the best deals every time, continue with the manually operated remote training (MORT) as you were doing. Using best price remote trading will always make you a profit, but not necessarily always the best profit.