trade station traders not trading

[Dedmoin]

I have built a small trading station and assigned some subordinates as traders, set the wares to trade and a reasonable price to make some small profit. Of course there is also a manager and some money to start with.
But nothing is happening.

I am trying to trade with Teladianium at buy 190, sell 220. In the same sector there is a factory selling Teladianium at 170.

I have created a trade rule for all options (even there is no description what the difference is.. trade? supply? sale of ships?) with no factions selected, which would mean everyone is allowed to trade. At least at my HQ that only trades for research it works this way.
But nothing is happening. The traders stay close to the station and are 'searching for trades'.

I noticed the new manager had only one star so I bought some manuals and promoted him to two stars. Now the traders are allowed to use two jump gates.
But nothing is happening, still 'searching for trades'.

I was playing around with the buy/sell amount. Maybe the automatic amount is based on production, which is 0. But the sliders don't make sense for trade stations imho. The max buy amount is always below the min sell amount. If wares are only bought until 1000 and then sales start, there will be no sales at all. But there are no buys either.

Now I have set up two wares for trade one with all set to automatic and one with manual buy/sell amount and price. When I look at the trade offers of this station, I see those two wears but they are greyed out, there is no price and the one set to automatic doesn't even have an amount stated.

What did I miss to have my trading station work?

[Itchy.de]

Are there any factories in reach that have current buy orders for Teladianium at 220+? Your trader will not buy anything unless there is a buy/sell route currently available, they will not buy stuff when they cannot directly sell it.

[Dedmoin]

Originally posted by Itchy.de:

Are there any factories in reach that have current buy orders for Teladianium at 220+? Your trader will not buy anything unless there is a buy/sell route currently available, they will not buy stuff when they cannot directly sell it.

Sorry it was set to 210 not 220. Yes there was a factory buying for 211. It is not the most profitable but at least better than nothing.
What is the point to not buy wares when they are cheap and sell later when prices increased?
If I buy sell immediatly I don't need a trading station. Except maybe for distributing wares brought by XL freighter, which would also only work when done manually as it will only bring the amount which could be immediatly sold. Although the XL wouldn't even come to bring the wares because there would be other bids closer to it.

[Dedmoin]

Somehow the traders started to trade after about 10 minutes doing nothing.
I have 4 ships with different stars and it seems the ships with the most experienced captains are doing the most trades. There is even a ship that didn't do any trades for at least an hour probably never.

There was even a NPC selling wares to my station. So this seems to work.

Maybe those trades are just exceptionally slow and only one at a time with some minutes break inbetween.
Trade station seems to be a bit pointless with manager/pilots not being experienced yet.
So the only thing to do is sector automine and exploration to at least get some income and being able to improve piloting. Unfortunately there is not much for managers except manuals.

One of my two wares is now traded. Teladianium is still not being touched. I don't know if it might be because of the automatic trade amount or because buy/sell options. I now changed the amount to a fix value.

[rasabt]

could you describe the trade-rule you used
and where you set it
maybe there's an issue there aswell
just a thought.

station management is nothing for the faint of heart, we all know it.

[Dedmoin]

It seems everything was set ok on the station. It just didn't do anything for no apparent reason for several minutes, which makes setting up a station the first time without any hints or explanation a tricky task.

The ships still don't buy one ware but at least sell it when NPC delivered some.
It may really be caused by the fact there is cheap supply available but the buyer is two gates away. So NPC prefers not to buy the cheap wares at all.
This is strange behavior... So trading station is more like a web shop: you order we get it for your and deliver instead of a traditional reseller with warehouse: we have plenty of this wares you can come and get it right away
So it is basically like a stationary auto trader rather than a trading station.

I still don't know on some of the settings.
Should I set everything on auto?
Set buy/sell amount on auto? Only buy amount on auto or both on fixed values? Does it make any difference?
Does it make sense to set prices on auto or could it be they are buying at higher price than selling (I guess no since they only buy when there is also a buy offer at another station)
Will they buy wheres when price and amount is set to fix value but sell is disabled? So I can collect cheap wares and sell them somewhere else.

[Oddible]

Post screen shots of your logistical overview screen showing your buy sell orders - particularly the one that isn't working. Also post a screen shot of the behaviors tab of one of your trade ships.

Regarding auto pricing and amount, the volume that needs to get filled seems to have an effect on trade priority, so try reducing the volume available and see if that changes things.

[Dedmoin]

It seems to work now, I am not sure why.
Trading of Teladianium is mostly done by NPC. I don't know why they want to sell cheap and buy expensive from my station. A few times one of my own ships sells some too but not going further than to the next sector.
I have changed the trade amount from auto to a fix value. Since the whole behavior changed, I don't know if this was relevant at all.
My ships started to be more active and buying and selling more regularly. I don't know why since they or the manager didn't increase in stars.

I built another station with one ship assigned to supply the built storage. Even though energy cells are needed and there are cheap energy cells in the same sector, just one minute flight away, this built trader didn't move for about an hour. Eventually I bought it manually.
When first assigned as built trader it immediatly started to bring wares. I have no clue why it stopped.
Trading works perfectly fine at my HQ though.

What is the difference between Supply, Trade, Ship Sale in global trading rules?
Stands Supply for buying wares for a station, Trade to allow a station to sell wares and Ship Sales for ships trading?
So if I want to restrict other factions buying from my station but my own ships assigned to this station should be allowed to sell my products to others, how do I have to set up those rules?
Somehow something essential is missing it seems
And I cannot try it out as I have to wait an hour to see if the change did anything :(

[NoDMoD]

Originally posted by Itchy.de:

Are there any factories in reach that have current buy orders for Teladianium at 220+? Your trader will not buy anything unless there is a buy/sell route currently available, they will not buy stuff when they cannot directly sell it.

That#S not true... they buy wares even if thzere is no sell order when asigned to a station.