[FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

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delray
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[FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Tue, 14. Feb 23, 20:00

1.3 with unofficial patch.

I have the Hub with Station Manager running the ships on trade duty, buying and selling all sorts of goods. They all have autojump set to 95% shields, blacklist is set to auto and freighters all are set to use that default blacklist. This happened to me a few times already:

My freighter picks up the goods at the Hub and flies to sell them in let's say Spaceweed Grove, where some stations are hostile, some aren't hostile and the same applies to the ships flying through the sector. I have -10 rep with the pirates, so my assumption was the sector would be off limits due to the owner hating me.
He jumps to that sector, he starts flying towards the customer station in there, who isn't a hostile - even if almost everything else in that sector is hostile.
He's attacked on the way there by let's say Pirate Blastclaw.
He autojumpus out of danger when his shields get dented, as he should.
I get the notification that one of my ships is being attacked.
The freighter in question rests for a bit in the safe sector it jumped out to.
Then... he jumps into Spaceweed Grove where he was attacked again. And again and again.
Station Manager tries forcing him to make that deal in that hostile sector until he's either finally destroyed or his energy cells jump out.
I have to disable the station manager and manually reset the ships to end the vicious cycle.

Do you guys have any idea what might be causing this? Am I setting something wrong? Maybe I should just set Pirate sectors to hard block to prevent it?

But then, even if I do that, my freighters try to pull the same stunt in sectors of races I'm repairing my relations with, just prematurely jumping into their core sectors where the military still is hostile to me, even if the stations no longer are. And it'd be fine if attempted once, but repeating the same order until death feels like something was configured wrong.

It feels like the sector where one of my ships was attacked should be blacklisted for at least a short bit, but for whatever reason in those specific cases where the place is half hostile half friendly it doesn't apply somehow.
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Cycrow
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by Cycrow » Tue, 14. Feb 23, 22:14

Essentially the emergency jump interrupts the current command to escape, then they will resume thier previous command.

The station manager should block the sector if the ship is attacked, however this doesn't apply to any ships already running, as it only applies to new routes

delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Wed, 15. Feb 23, 14:19

Does this mean I shouldn't be using autojump with station manager? Let station manager evecuate the ships himself? Can he even do it?
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Jimmy C
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by Jimmy C » Fri, 17. Feb 23, 08:23

Cycrow wrote:
Tue, 14. Feb 23, 22:14
Essentially the emergency jump interrupts the current command to escape, then they will resume thier previous command.
I think the problem lies there. If an automated ship initiated an emergency jump, that implies it was attacked in the middle of executing their previous command. It follows that simply resuming the previous command will simply result in the ship being attacked again in the same place.

I don't use Station Manager, but I do use Trader Mk3 and I see the same behavior. Trader gets attacked, trader jumps out, trader flies back to the same sector it was attacked in, trader gets attacked again, trader jumps out again.

I think ships that emergency jump after getting attacked should cancel the command to go to the sector they got attacked in and proceed to the next command on their list.

Agimar
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by Agimar » Fri, 17. Feb 23, 10:56

That's why I simply discharged the station-manager. In theory he can handle a station-complex with less ships... but he'll loose more over time.

So I decided to work only with best buy/best sell commands and can allways take over controll while a TS is getting attacked.

At least, using a Mk3 Trader, you can still take over controll, when attacked.

delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Sun, 19. Feb 23, 11:35

The only way I could find to get around this was disabling Station Manager station-wide so all ships are recalled to homebase, this breaks the cycle with the ship jumping into danger and allows to save him. I also started blacklist-blocking sectors of risk, just like we used to in AP. No Black Hole Sun for you guys. Still problem remains with races that are half-hostile after fixing the reputation, but I guess you just have to wait that period out, turn the Station Manager off until you've visited all sectors and apologized for weapons fire to everyone.

I also had a problem with Station Manager not trading at all, until I've realized it went on strike after he wasn't paid from the station (I forgot to disable him before moving the funds away). And there was a problem of him not doing anything when prices were set to average, changing them to +1 and -1 (depending on what I want to do) started him going.

In general, I think it does what it's supposed to do for the most part. Runs the Hub with 25 freighters just the same CAG used to, but with much less hassle. For sure he's doing better than same number of STs/UTs would. We'll see what happens when I bump the number of freighters by another 25 or 50 and add a couple supply stations.
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Cycrow
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by Cycrow » Sun, 19. Feb 23, 13:15

To help with hostile sectors you can setup a satellite network. The station manager uses this to block sectors where enemies are found (if its enabled in the restrictions menu)

I do plan to make improvements to station manager when ships get attacked for the unofficial patch. Currently the station manager doesn't really deal with attacks. It mainly relies on the ships ability to evade

delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Tue, 21. Feb 23, 21:34

The main problem with Station Manager seems to be a lack of any feedback whatsoever why he isn't active at the moment. Ships are docked and not sent out, none of them having a little M next to their names, and player is left guessing why that's happening. CAG used to have this little text thing in brackets that'd tell us it was trying to cycle through all possible deals in the universe, showing the player that he couldn't find any profitable destinations. Station manager doesn't copy that behavior.

It'd also be amazing if there was some sort of an explanation how pricing is used by the station manager. What my setting the price of energy cells at average price, avg-1 or avg+1 actually does and how it impacts the trades he's making, if at all. Why are ships being moved out to sell at avg+1 and not moved out at avg-1, even though they aren't selling to trade stations at all. How far he can see the deals, if satellites impact his view of prices in the universe. Is it impacted by the amount of goods at the station, like CAG used to be (sell only if station at least X full, buy only if station at least Y empty)? Does it matter if the production queue in the HQ is empty or not? Does Station Manager know how to handle the Hub which doesn't produce anything?
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delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Sun, 26. Feb 23, 08:24

A quick note for the future generations, how to make Station Manager service independent trading at the Hub. The purpose being to bump your trade rank while making a profit without using ST/UT.

1. Use command->advanced to add the wares you want traded, particularly all the bio and foodstuffs, electronics and minerals.
2. Set all prices to average -1.
3. Set "can trade with other races" to no. You don't want to trade with them near the average price (doesn't help your trade rank) and you don't want them to clutter your docking slots at the Hub (those are really limited when your fleet grows to dozens of ships). Your own freighters will do a much better job buying and selling anyway.
4. Manually add to the blacklist all the sectors of danger (borders xenon, owned by pirate, owned by yaki), one by one, as blocked. Try not to use automatic blacklisting of races, it will send your freighters before the race is fully friendly and have them attacked. Best do it manually when you're sure you're ready to go in.
5. If you have a satellite network (it's super easy to deploy automatically), set Station Manager to use it as a warning. Doesn't hurt, though it's not 100% guaranteed he won't send your ships straight into a bunch of Qs. You'll lose ships every once in a while regardless of what you do, consider it a price of doing business.
6. Set half of your freighters to buy and the other half to sell. Restrict them from trading ecells. If you don't, they will empty the hub and other freighters won't have fuel to make their trades. Having the fleet divided into buyers and sellers keeps them far more active than everyone being on the generic trade duty.
7. Restrict one freighter to only trade in ecells and only to buy. Set ecells to average+1 price if you have trouble with him. Alternatively, you can set that freighter to "none" instead of "buy" and manually order it to "buy for best price.. ecells". If you also want your Hub to stockpile missiles, mines, ammunition or drones (for personal use or for the missions), do it this way as well, with designated separate ships to do so.
8. For whatever reason, ore, silicon and warheads, which trade very well and turn much profit, are also very low on the list of goods to trade for station manager, he'll basically only ever trade them after all the food deals are done. You might want to designate a few separate freighters to buy and sell these specifically to get more deals that way.
9. Similarly, you might want to use smaller, faster ships to trade electronics specifically. A very quick TP or TM can make many more deals than a slow freighter - and they don't cost nearly as much. This keeps your freighters from running 99% empty runs.
10. If you want scavenging, a dedicated cheap TM is perfect for the job. It's not without a purpose, though scavenging is probably better done by an EQ dock or your HQ.
11. Worth noting, you don't want to use Station Manager to do any of this on the HQ, HQ's station manager only ever moves ships when something is being built at the HQ, otherwise it stays dormant.
12. There'll be periods of time when station manager just refuses to send out ships. It might be caused by enemies crossing through the Hub, it might be caused by the deal he wants to make to be jeopardized by enemies crossing the target sector, we have no way of knowing. Just don't panic and wait it out.
13. When one of your ships is getting attacked (as in the first post of mine here), you have two options really. One is to disable Station Manager entirely and have everyone recalled home. Other is to send your warships into the sector and kill the danger before it kills your freighter.
14. Every once in a while you'll have to do some servicing, preferably when it stalls anyway. Disable station manager, recall all ships, empty their cargo holds, restart it after a while.
15. In "build a factory" missions, look for targets that benefit your Hub trading and build them even if you won't make much money on the mission itself. If you keep adding advanced factories everywhere, after a while you'll see your Hub trade much bolstered.
Where is it?

delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Fri, 3. Mar 23, 23:13

I think I figured out why Station Manager freezes when running a trade dock or the hub. It appears it tries to maintain some sort of a balance where the trade dock is half-filled with the goods and is reluctant to buy or sell when he thinks it's near that equilibrium. He'll consider the place half-stocked up and be content with that, basically.

I switched a good amount of my "buyer" freighters to the manual "buy ware for best price" command, one freighter for each trade good. When they started flying in and filling the dock with trade goods, the fleet of "seller" freighters basically instantly all took off and started selling goods. They never stopped since, producing steady 10-15 mil per hour of profit. Basically as soon as you have more stockpiled than that 50 or 66% that the Station Manager is happy with, he'll kick the freighters out to sell what he thinks is an excess of goods. And keep them working forever.

The good old CAG used to have a setting for this. Sell down to 20% of max stockpile. Buy up to 80% of max stockpile. This allowed CAGs to keep going, basically. If Station Manager had that feature as well, I'm pretty certain it'd never freeze and stop buying and selling while running a dock/hub.
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iXenon
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by iXenon » Sat, 4. Mar 23, 15:29

Could you, please, shed some light on this logic? I have several questions about what you described:
  1. What type of goods do you select when you add them to the hub? Is it "Tradeable"?
  2. Do I understand it right that these goods are going to be bought and sold at the same time?
  3. From my understanding the command "buy ware for best price" would work only once and the ship would stop at the remote station once it bought the requested stuff. How do you manage to repeat it automatically?
Thanks in advance.

P.S. I noticed that Advanced Satellites are selling well even with really high price. Once of ideas is to send ships to buy it from ED or MO or fabrics and then sell for that higher price, letting the NPC buy it from there. The problem here, I don't know how to specify one price for buying and another for selling goods on the same station.

delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Sat, 4. Mar 23, 17:39

What type of goods do you select when you add them to the hub? Is it "Tradeable"?
I've added all the goods from bio and food categories, as well as all minerals and most tech goods as Tradeable. Energy cells are marked as Tradeable, but each freighter is restricted from trading in them via blacklist in Station Manager Restrictions. I have a separate freighter set to "None" role and "Buy ware for best price... ecells". This way other freighters can always refuel. You can setup ecell trading on another station (especially the HQ), if you want that revenue, but 30000 is too small a buffer to do the same on the Hub.

Do I understand it right that these goods are going to be bought and sold at the same time?
I have 12 freighters selling them through Station Manager and about double that buying them. Buying is done manually, via "buy ware for best price ... ore", one ship per ware.
From my understanding the command "buy ware for best price" would work only once and the ship would stop at the remote station once it bought the requested stuff. How do you manage to repeat it automatically?
Nah, it'll keep going. At 30-ish freighters I am making 5-10 mil an hour and reached Capitalist in record time. From my understanding of the script, Station Manager while in charge of a dock aims at it being 60% full, rather than doing what CAG used to do back in the AP days - both buying and selling. So you need to manually deliver the goods, to push him above that 60%, make him realize he has excess to deal with and have him keep sending freighters to sell.
P.S. I noticed that Advanced Satellites are selling well even with really high price. Once of ideas is to send ships to buy it from ED or MO or fabrics and then sell for that higher price, letting the NPC buy it from there. The problem here, I don't know how to specify one price for buying and another for selling goods on the same station.
You can't set the prices that way, you can only hope your freighters will always go for the cheapest possible buy and most expensive sale, which luckily they do all the time, which makes this entire scheme possible. Adv Satellites and other similar things are not a very good thing to trade since you can only ever sell them at average or below average price, nobody is consuming them. Selling near average doesn't really help your trade rank, so it's a pretty moot enterprise.

I have "trade with other races" set to "no" because I don't like them clogging my docking slots, you only have so many at the Hub and SM won't release a returning ship until it can land somewhere.

I have all prices set to average minus 1 credit. Here's how freighters are organized right now:

Image
https://imgur.com/a/nsZae5c

(Consus is a terrible choice of ship to do this, by the way. Enhanced Mercury or something similar, if I had to do it all over again.)

Now that I figured out how to make them keep buying and selling at profit and to grow my trade rank, I can start scaling it up. Largest I've ever gone in AP was 400 ships, but that was kinda an overkill, even with the hundreds of station construction missions I've done.
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iXenon
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by iXenon » Sat, 4. Mar 23, 20:10

Thank you for the explanation. I got confused the "Buy ware for best price..." command with "Remote Best Buy..." Now I read the description and it looks clear, thanks again.

Regarding Advanced Satellites, I have to double check it. I read that it should work but unexpectedly, I discovered that I have the default (average) price on my complex. Not sure if I did it for a reason or just forgot to increase, so a small experiment is needed now. The idea is not to sell AS by SM, but allow NPC to buy it instead. On that my complex I always have incoming line and the number of products that station keeps tends to zero. I should increase the price and check if NPCs would like it.

delray
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by delray » Fri, 10. Mar 23, 15:49

This might interest you, what the actual profitable goods are on my Hub:

Image
( https://i.imgur.com/i7oghsd.png )

Please ignore Adv Satellite, a ship placing them was homebased there. Notice -10 mil by buying energy cells and another -3 mil in wages, while profit is more than 300 mil total and between 5-10 mil per hour.

SM can make good money, when forced to do so.
Where is it?

iXenon
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Re: [FL] What makes Station Manager keep sending attacked ship into the same sector it autojamped from?

Post by iXenon » Fri, 14. Jul 23, 09:36

delray wrote:
Sat, 4. Mar 23, 17:39
Do I understand it right that these goods are going to be bought and sold at the same time?
I have 12 freighters selling them through Station Manager and about double that buying them. Buying is done manually, via "buy ware for best price ... ore", one ship per ware.
After some research I got the impression that this is the only way to buy and sell at the same station. But meanwhile I found this. And the next post says it seems to work. So, the idea here is to use TWO docks. One buys goods while another sells the same goods that are being moved by Trade Distribution Run which is configured with that 'Replace' trick. Has anyone tried this?

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