exporting goods from player HQ

[Warhunter]

how do i get my traders to sell the goods i produce at the player HQ (the one you get from the story)

i got a manager, storage, dock, and an energy cell production.
i can manually fly a ship into dock and pick up the goods

but my trade ship thats set as subordinate auto trade for the station (i selected the trade ship and right clicked on the station to set as trader for it) but it refuses to dock and pick up the goods to sell. its just a Mercury Vanguard so its able to dock

I've also set the trader's default behavior to auto trade only energy cells with both buy/sell at max gate distance but it seems to just idle in space. which is weird since when i had it on auto trade before i got my station going it was working perfectly fine

what am i doing wrong / what am i missing to get this to work?

edit. on a sidenote i dont think the AI knows how to dock at the player HQ. literally watched an AI energy trader pass the dock and head straight towards the center of the station towards the big asteroid in the middle

through i assume since an energy trader showed up in the first place means my HQ is able to sell the energy cells but my own traders dont seem to have figured it out

EDIT2
STATION NEEDED A HABITAT FOR AUTOMATION TO WORK IF ANYONE ELSE HAS THIS PROBLEM

[Mjr.Death]

Try auto export instead of trade? I have no idea if any of those auto options besides mining even work.

[War]

i am haveing the same issue

[Angrypencils]

I also have this same issue. I can manually issue trade orders and those will work but assigning a ship to the station as a trader and setting them to autotrade just results in them sitting in space twiddling their thumbs.

[Warhunter]

ok i just figured it out.

apparently i needed a habitat before the automation starts to work. i wish the game would tell me this OR EVEN A MANUAL i mean for such a complex game the lack of info is REALLY annoying

[War]

o i guess they have to live some where lol

[War]

how did u build habitat i have all the resources it need but it wont start building

[sORry1988]

So it works when u build a Habitat, good to know. Thank you!

[Warhunter]

i built the habitat the same way as any other station building? it just might take awhile for it to get started since the constructor may be waiting for materials. just go do other stuff for awhile and check back in a bit since sometimes its slow to start

also since the workforce acts like a multiplier for station production it makes sense it needs a habitat. so the more workforce over the required minimum the higher the bonus production you get. through not sure if it has diminishing returns or not for it