Tips on making autotraders more efficient?

[VeraelHasta]

So I have this autotrader set up only for hull parts. He has 1 sector range, 2 factories and 2 shipyards in range. But a lot of them time he just sits not doing anything, even tho there is a lot of hull parts in the factories and shipyards are empty.

Are there any tricks to make them find offers faster, some options I'm not aware of or something??

[Belteguesian]

It is either a matter of not finding profitable jobs or there is a problem with the mod you are using (autotrader with 1 sector range is most probably from a mod)

[VeraelHasta]

Originally posted by Belteguesian:

It is either a matter of not finding profitable jobs or there is a problem with the mod you are using (autotrader with 1 sector range is most probably from a mod)

Uh, no? You can set max gate disdtance to even 0 in autotrading. Without any mods.

Thats why I'm asking if there are some tricks to make them work better or it is what it is.

[Gregorovitch]

Just in case you don't know and before going into further details, have you got satellites dropped on the customer yards and the hull plate factories? If their not satted up then your autotrader won't be seeing the deals at all (sorry if you already know this).

Autotrade essentially works on the basis of price differential. Unless their is sufficient margin an autotrader won't go for the deal. So to understand why yours isn't doing anything compare the prices at both the seller and buyer stations.

I am not certain about this but I believe the way the autotrade calculates acceptable margins is not straight forward, i.e. I don't think it's based on flat cash difference alone nor is it purely % margin based, I think it might be some mixture, and then there is the question of distance to add to that. Which means it it's not easy to predict exactly what the necessary margin would be for your autotrader to pick up the deals you're hoping it will pick up, like right now as you watch it.

Again I am not sure, but I also suspect that the same trade algorithm is used for your autotraders, NPC traders and you station traders (which also use the autotrade AI command). If this was the case then it would explain why the algorithm is not simple, and also why it won't necessarily do what you want it to do, because it would be tweaked to support the overall economy in general not just you.

For example, they wouldn't want traders to constantly go for biggest cash margin trade over the shortest distance all the time otherwise a lot of stations might get ignored and have no resources delivered and the economy go into a downward spiral.

In terms of advice, not many of us use standalone autotraders much any more ('cos of scarce 3* pilots) so it's a while since I used them seriously, but I think the best policy is to widen their scope of operations but not too much. In this case I would add some additional ship components to the wares list (you got weapons components, engine parts and so on) and maybe expand the range by a sector or so to catch a few more factories.

This way if the margin is insufficient to trigger the hull plate deals you've set up for there will be another deal in something else that will trigger, and by the time the trader has done those then the hull parts factories will have stocked up and their prices will have fallen thus triggering the previously ignored deals.

Of course you might also want to make sure these hull plate factories are getting enough refined metal etc (you can easily check their stock levels) to stay in continuous production otherwise their stocks will not rise and their prices won't fall. It might mean you need to think about putting the autotrader onto refined metal deals to supply them.

In short, start by tweaking the scope of operations until the trader busts into action and then keep an eye on it to make sure it stays in action, tweaking some more if needs be. But don't look at it too much, however tempting it might be. A watched pot doesn't boil.

[Sticky]

Traders are the worse to get started. Miners are so much easier and the basic ware that requires no buy cost. But the trick is to Supply the factories needing the raw materials to force the station to have a good buy rate for your traders. But to do a Trader using Distribute Wares as the Default Behavior until he is a 3 star captain. I would Let him choose between all wares that a Shipyard may require, if in a sector with a shipyard. Though you could use those Freighters for your manual trading preparing your empire and focus on the miners. Miners will eventually make 3 star captains that would make better traders to start out with. Also Trade and Mining Captains level up as good Managers for stations also.

[VeraelHasta]

My main reason for only hull parts trader was to supply wharfs and shipyards constantly. I have other trader to move around refined metals and graphene for the hulls. I'm just annoyed that shipyards always have 0 hull parts and I have to manually deliver them whenever I need some ships.

[Sticky]

Hull Parts is a great option. But why limit if you had another opportunity to make a trade in between hull part trades. Unless the Hull parts is keeping the trader busy. But its usually the price between the stations asking and the stations selling that is the issue why a trader is waiting. Tip those sectors with the Mini Sector in them you can trade in the mini sectors as being 1 sector.

[Gregorovitch]

Originally posted by Gart:

My main reason for only hull parts trader was to supply wharfs and shipyards constantly. I have other trader to move around refined metals and graphene for the hulls. I'm just annoyed that shipyards always have 0 hull parts and I have to manually deliver them whenever I need some ships.

You shouldn't have to, what you're trying to do will work. If the yards have zero stock their prices will be maxed. The only reasons why your trader isn't delivering anything is a) the hull plate factories prices are too high, b) there is no sat coverage, or c) you've made some kind of error setting up the trader in the behaviour tab.

What you've done it totally sound in principle and it will work in practice but you've got to look for the glitch. It won't be a bug or anything, the trading system is known to work notwithstanding it's idiosyncracies.

[Wraith]

if you want to only move hull parts constantly without have to worry about profit to much, distribute wares is probably what your looking for.
It will try to fill it cargo up with hull parts and sell it off through multiple trades.

[VeraelHasta]

The problem with distributing wares is it seems to only work in one current sector. This doesn't fix my problem, Hull Factory in the sector with the shipyards is always empty. Two or three hull factorios 1 sector over have parts and resources just rarely get delivered by npc.

Oh well, I'll plop down my own hull factory next to the shipyard, player owned ships seem to be doing better job than npc for some reason.