Station "supply' vs "trade"

[jumbled]

Can someone explain the functional difference in the station info screen for the options "station trade" and "station supply"? It seems everything is up for "trade", so what the heck does "supply" do?

[Dumpshock]

Someone might be able to give a more detailed answer, but think of it more as Buy and Sell. With Trade, a station will Sell it's products, and Supply, it will Buy resources it needs.

An example with those options, you can set a blacklist that will restrict Supply to your faction only, so only your ships will provide resources to the station. With Trade, you can similarly set a blacklist to limit who that station will sell to.

[Sticky]

Setting up the Trade Global orders is a good step to do for what you want for Most of your stations. Then you can individually change the stations trade settings to global or another one you set or no restrictions is an option. You may want to toggle some of these settings even after you think you set them how you want them. If a station is not getting the resources it needs to produce a Product ware its not making you any credits. Even buying a resource at max price will still make a profit from the products. You can tailor the trade settings for an individual ware in the Logistics of the station. Its best to let the Manager do all the pricing for the station wares, If you set them to a fixed price you might not find any trades for long periods of times.

There are 4 types of Supply and Trade options for a station
Supply, Trade, Construction, and Ship sales ( requires Ship Trader after you add Maintenance or Ship Fab.)

[Cassian]

Originally posted by Sticky:

Supply is incoming wares, Trade is outgoing wares.

Maybe egosoft should hire someone that speaks english. Buy and sell would be a hell of a lot easier to understand, or incoming/outgoing. They word so many things in a way that doesn't make sense.

[Sticky]

Well there is also Intermediate wares in stations that you are producing resources for other wares also. They can be sold or bought depending on the economy.

[jumbled]

I'm still having an issue with this setup. Here's my problem...

You have your personal globals for station trade, supply and ship sales. These are check boxes to enable or disable each, and if you enable one, the line item config listing shows this as the default for that category. This means, any station set to use globals will now show THAT line item setting as its default for this particular thing.

Say we use "supply" here. Turn it on and your restriction for all stations set to use globals now lists this line item as the default in their respective info panels. Fine...so be it...but it doesn't work. I still see aliens supplying me.

If I go into the station overview panel, the buy and sell settings of each ware show no restrictions, and THIS is from the TRADE setting, not the SUPPLY setting...BOTH of them.

So, what purpose is there for the global setting up defaults if the station settings don't USE those defaults as they should? It seems I need to set up the TRADE default, not the SUPPLY default in order to keep the aliens away. But this would also cut out SELLING stuff, not simply buying it, I think. Therefore, I need to manually set each station's ware settings to use whatever I tell it to buy or sell, rather than set one global for everything.

Needless to say, this thing is broken for how it's advertised.

[lock]

Every Station that sells/buys has it OWN setting, you use that to sell or buy....if its not a defense station only.

Restrict to your OWN self if you want to not sell to aliens.

Supply is incoming wares and trade is outgoing wares.

[jumbled]

They each have their own setting, yes, IF you want to massively micromanage things, which I don't.

If I set my master global for something, like supply, my station will show this rule in it's info page if it is set to use the master global. Each box in Master reflects on one or another of Trade, Supply, or Sell Ships in the stations. Turn one on and this becomes the default for everything using globals. You can see this as the name of the rule is listed on the station info page as the one being used.

So, unless you explicitly set each and every station, or each and every WARE on that station to use something different, the station global becomes the default for everything that station buys and sells as wares, based on whatever the Master dictates...IF one of those boxes in Master is checked. That's why it's called a global -- one stop shopping for your financial empire.

BUT, the individual wares do not reflect this in their individual buy/sell settings if they are set to use the station global. Not for the SUPPLY setting, at least. I am making a fair and reasonable assumption here that Master reflects down to Stations, which then reflects down to Wares. Therefore, if I set the master global for SUPPLY, the BUY settings for a ware should be using it, but they are not. They seem to use the global for TRADE (the outgoing setting) instead. This is an error, as "supply" is supposed to be inbound, not outbound. In fact, I don't see anything actually using the "supply' Master or Station setting at all.

This tells me it's broken, and likely at the Ware level as this is the one that is supposed to be using it. I set it in Master, the Station reflects this as the default, but the WARE does not. Therefore, you need to micromanage things so badly because apparently people don't pay such close attention to who is visiting their station or why you have such a glut of alien ships outside waiting for parking space. You're all too busy setting the individual wares to bother looking out the bloody window. :)

Oh, by the way, I've also built defense stations WITH production, and they still apparently function as defense stations (shield icon on the map and controlling sectors). Go figure. The game may set the default names depending on what the station is actually doing (ship technology, refinery, etc.), but for as long as you have an admin building on it, you get the icon.

[Sticky]

Those little check boxes on the Global Trade settings, don't enable or disable the selections. They are asking you if you want to set the default for Supply Trade or Ship Sales, You may not want to click those options but only set what races can trade with you. Then you can pick a trade rule for the station for Supply, Trade, Ship Sales, ect.

[lock]

You brought a "micro-managed" game...its a well knowned fact....how you micro manage it is not the same as everybody as you play in your own sandbox....

[jumbled]

Granted this game has a lot of micromanagement in it, but those globals are supposed to alleviate some of the hair-pulling.

I think there is a communication flaw here.

1) I pull up Player Info.
2) I click on Global Orders.
3) I see a lot of stuff I can set, one of these being Trade Rules.
4) At the top is "Only my property may trade" (probably a game default)
5) Clicking on this shows three check boxes: Trade, Supply and Ship sales.

NOW, clicking on any or all of these CHANGES the "Only my property may trade" statement to now show "Default: xxx" (whatever box I choose). This is reflected in any station I click on and go to Information, if the local box "use globals" is on, and the drop down box underneath shows this same rule listed. This implies that station is now following that rule and any restrictions I set for it. If not, then it's a lame excuse for a configuration practice. It's supposed to let me set a global default for what I want everybody to do, thereby NOT making me do it for each and every ware on each and every station I plop down. You'd have to be insane to want that level of micromanagement. And if not, you WILL BE by the time you finish. I should not be forced to babysit these things. I expect a little intelligence once in a while.

If no rule box is checked, the "Only my property may trade" line shows no default assignment and each of my stations shows "no restrictions".

If I set a restriction and do NOT click on the box for trade/supply/sales, stations do not change their local defaults. Here I need to UN-check the local "use global" box and manually chose a new rule from the drop down list. But this represents an unnecessary step if you have a global working for you. Not unless you want THIS ONE STATION to behave differently.

But this is not my underlying issue. I set the "supply" box. The "Only my property..." thing shows as default for "Supply". My stations ALSO show this as their station supply default rule. But the WARES do not show this. They still show "no restrictions" regardless of the master or station global setting. THIS is what I feel is broken. The ware "Buy" setting, if this is supposed to follow the "Supply" restriction, is not. If I instead set the TRADE restriction box, the ware shows THIS as the restriction. But TRADE is supposed to be outgoing (i.e. SELL, not BUY), and both buy and sell use this. So "Supply" doesn't work and "Trade" applies to BOTH.

The only way around this is to literally pull my last remaining hair out and manually set buy rules for each ware I do not want aliens to sell at my doorstep (minerals in my case...I have mining ships going to waste out there). Either that, or skip the whole thing and eat whatever they feed me. I just wish pilots would level up a bit faster to make 3 stars so I can use auto-mine. Sector mining is virtually useless, especially for gas. And if my miners can't work for my stations, I want them doing something else useful.

[Sticky]

If you change your Step 5 shown in your post above. To better understand how it works, it should say something more like Click these check boxes IF you want to set ANY of these to the Default for ALL your stations. You do not need to check any of them, only if you want that to be the default. You can create a Trade rule without using the check boxes and set the races for that particular trade rule. You can make multiple trade rules this way.

[jumbled]

Originally posted by Sticky:

If you change your Step 5 shown in your post above. To better understand how it works, it should say something more like Click these check boxes IF you want to set ANY of these to the Default for ALL your stations. You do not need to check any of them, only if you want that to be the default. You can create a Trade rule without using the check boxes and set the races for that particular trade rule. You can make multiple trade rules this way.

Yes, granted. If I want any of those boxes to become the default for everything (unless otherwise specified locally), THEN I check the box I want made the default and set a rule.

But once again, this is not actually the point. I can SET the default, in this case for Trade, and I can SEE this applied to each of my stations. I can further see this applies to each ware within those stations. So this much seems to work. But if I set SUPPLY, it doesn't seem to do anything.
I see it applied to the stations, but it is NOT applied to the wares. The wares each still say "no restrictions, and if I'm restricting all aliens, they're still stopping by.

I'm a former programmer, and this is a bug if ever I saw one. If the "Station Supply" box is supposed to affect each and every ware BUY setting, it does not. So Egosoft, pay attention and fix it. I'm done with this conversation. I lost my patience bug-proofing other people's work decades ago. Especially when they don't listen to my results.

[Cope]

so when i disable everyone with station trade, except for myself. my own ships arent selling to anyone?
my understanding is that it makes it where only your ships transfer wares from the station, and you sell elsewhere. or does it disable that?

basically how do i stop the ai from buying my refined minerals so that my guys can do it, bc this isnt working its stopping me too lol

[Oddible]

Originally posted by wimpy:

Originally posted by Sticky:

Supply is incoming wares, Trade is outgoing wares.

Maybe egosoft should hire someone that speaks english. Buy and sell would be a hell of a lot easier to understand, or incoming/outgoing. They word so many things in a way that doesn't make sense.

Actually they got it right, you're just oversimplifying it so you can understand something that is more complex than "buy and sell". Incoming can be moving wares from one of your stations to that station as well. Incoming just means supplying the station, not how it's paid for. Outgoing means moving the goods the station has, even if it means delivery to another of your stations. Their terminology is more accommodating to the various types of situations that can happen - maybe you are the one who should learn English - let's not be so culturally insensitive and grateful they even translated the game at all!

[Sticky]

Originally posted by Oddible:

Originally posted by wimpy:

Maybe egosoft should hire someone that speaks english. Buy and sell would be a hell of a lot easier to understand, or incoming/outgoing. They word so many things in a way that doesn't make sense.

Actually they got it right, you're just oversimplifying it so you can understand something that is more complex than "buy and sell". Incoming can be moving wares from one of your stations to that station as well. Incoming just means supplying the station, not how it's paid for. Outgoing means moving the goods the station has, even if it means delivery to another of your stations. Their terminology is more accommodating to the various types of situations that can happen - maybe you are the one who should learn English - let's not be so culturally insensitive and grateful they even translated the game at all!

Just wanted to correct myself that statement is incorrect now. Trade is incoming and outgoing wares. And supply is for drones for stations and restocking AUX ships. If you do not want others to sell you resources but keep trade with other to sell them wares, that is changed in the Logistics options for the individual stations. About 2 patches ago changes were made how the trade settings work.