[noob] Please help me configure my station

[brucecandoli]

Hello there fellows commanders,
i'm relatively new to the game, and i finally made it to building my first station! it's a refined metals station.
while the station kinda works, i'm struggling to make it work like i want.
The interface is utterly complex and i basically have no idea what i'm doing.
if someone could give me some hints that would be great.
This is the result i want to achieve

1. i don't want to neither buy energy cells. the station must use the ones produced. it's ok to sell them because i produce a lot.
2. i don't want to neither buy or sell ore. only my ships are supposed to drop ore in the storage. i have 2 miners assigned to the station.
3. i want to sell the refined metals that the station produces.

Now i'm pasting some screenshots to let you see how it's configured.

Logical overview:



For energy cells:



For ore:



Refined metals:



i have only one trade rule that i copied from a youtube video:



Is the setup correct? can it be improved?

Thanks in advance!
Matteo

[Novvak]

The logical overview is not very clear feom the get-go, to achieve what you are after,sone things have to be set up in a way that does not feel too intuitive.

In case you don't want to buy your e-cells, there is no way to get rid of the buy order. All you can do, is to set the buy order to imited amount, let's say 1, and set the minimum allowed price (this affects how much money your station needs to hold at any moment in time before the station manager will start sending you notifications).

When you want to rely on your own miners, there are two things to do. First, you actually have to set up a buy order for it and provide the capacity to fill up. Second, you can toggle a blacklist (the icon will send you to the right menu). There, you will want to create a blacklist that will not allow to interact with any faction but your own. Save the setting, go back to the station and apply it against ore. This is the exact thing you have figured out thanks to that video on YT.

To sell the products, create a sell order, specify the "amount to keep" to 1 and set the price. It's not a good idea to use auto-pricing, you will lose a lot of money this way. You can use the map with a trade view turned on - then click on refined metals on the list of wares of your station (or type it in the search box) - this way you will filter the offers for this specific ware. Provided you have fresh intel on the stations in the area, you will be able to see who wants to buy RM and for what price. Set the price you infer based on that information and recheck periodically - someone will come by to buy your stuff.

[zakaluka]

1. i don't want to neither buy energy cells. the station must use the ones produced. it's ok to sell them because i produce a lot.
2. i don't want to neither buy or sell ore. only my ships are supposed to drop ore in the storage. i have 2 miners assigned to the station.

You made a trade rule that restricts all factions other than your own. Apply it to both buy orders. Done on both these counts

NPC factions won't buy ore from your stations.

3. i want to sell the refined metals that the station produces.

It's really okay to leave the default configuration for the refined metals order. I understand the other responder's desire to set a manual price but this is a matter of preference. Auto pricing tries to get you the best price - but if you have too much storage, then it will needlessly stockpile goods and not sell anything for a long time. In that note,

You only have enough storage for about 40 minutes' production. This will cause a problem eventually; I'd build a medium container storage, next thing. Not large. Because again, having too much storage can be a problem.

But then I'd set the storage allocation to hold a few hours ' production.

[Duncaroos]

Anything that is an intermediate ware (a produced item that is also an input to the next production step(s)) should typically have the buy/sell orders set to a "No Trade" blacklist; this way your manager never buys or sells these items. If you set it to your faction only - your manager will transfer in/out based on the prices set to make the best pseudo-profit. Most of the time multi-production stations you don't want this either.

The only time you want to "buy" an intermediate ware is if you are not making enough of it per hour up to a minimum threshold. The only time you want to "sell" an intermediate ware is if you are over-producing and have a surplus quantity over the amount that can supply your next production step for X cycles or hours. If you click on the storage ware in the logistic overview, you'll see where you are under/over producing an intermediate ware to make this decision.

I feel the game tries to optimize this in the automatic allocation, however I find it does not handle intermediate wares well. Typically you only need to reserve the amount of space necessary to supply the next production step, but the game's auto allocation uses way more space and takes away the amount you can store your final product.

[db48x]

Honestly, you can just leave everything on the default settings and it will basically do just that.

The automatic pricing means that because you always have energy cells in stock, it would only buy them for the minimum price. No NPC trader is going to buy energy cells for 10Cr and then sell them to you for 10Cr; they look for trades that make a profit. So in practice you’ll never end up buying ecells.

If you have enough miners working the station, then you’ll probably never end up buying Ore from anyone else either. Again, the automatic pricing keeps the price you are willing to buy Ore at low, so NPCs will sell elsewhere.

And finally, for selling the Refined Metals, the automatic pricing ensures that they start out expensive, probably expensive enough that nobody wants to buy them. Then as you make more and more, the price will drop. Eventually it will drop enough that you will start to make sales. That sale will raise the price again. Thus, you will make sales at the best price possible, given the state of your competition.

Plus you get one other benefit: the ability to buy from NPCs during a shortage if necessary, without having to change any settings on your station. If your miners get distracted by the Kha’ak, for example, then an NPC can come along and deliver some Ore before you run out. This ensures that disruptions in supply do not result in a loss of sales. Sure, your profit margin will go down a little, but your station won't stop earning money.

Most of the time you should just ignore all of the settings on the Logical Overview. The defaults work really well.