Advice on large traders?

[Charles]

I was wandering if there are any good ways to effectively use large traders. It seems that when I assign them to a station they tend to use their cargo space in very ineffective ways. For example they will go and deliver around 5k food when a Baldric, which is also assigned to the station they are at, could have delivered it more efficiently.

I want to try to keep my ship numbers down so am opting for large traders. I figured they might be slower but that really isn't the reason they are working so poorly. It would seem that what makes the M traders so much better is that they waste less cargo space. I tried to remedy this by assigning some M traders, but the station AI seems to not even consider cargo volume when issuing trade orders. For example, My Baldrics are trying to haul Computronic substrate while my Okinawa is hauling tiny amounts of food.

I would love some advise on how to wrangle the AI into submission. Ideally in a way that uses minimal ships, and takes up minimal list space.

[Pandorian]

If you're trying to cut down on ships then you'll need more "hands on" commands than station trader / auto trader. My suggestion is look into Repeat Order traders. You can specify how much storage to fill up and how much to sell for.

[trooperrob]

Agreed, Egosoft should look into prioritisation.
If you assign 10 miners to a station that requires ore and silicon I bet they would all go after 1 of them initially, then find the storage is full...
It should consider ware size / distance and speed .
Large are very useful for build storage, but still suffer the saem problem

[mikemonger]

Large traders would only really be effective if the station manager could do "routes". You know...pick up wares, then stop here and sell, then stop there and sell, then stop at the other place and sell, then return for more stuff.

But when it's load, sell, load, sell, load sell, they're not efficient. The way the AI works, M traders are far superior because of their speed.

You really want to cut down on ships? Don't waste your time building fighters. In my last play-through the majority of my military consisted of a feet of 10 Asgards and a fleet of 30 Syns. And that...pretty much let me conquer all the Xenon.

L Miners
M Traders
L and XL military ships
Maybe a dozen or so M military ships in the systems you've built up stations in for security.

I've found that's the most efficient mix.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Pandorian:

If you're trying to cut down on ships then you'll need more "hands on" commands than station trader / auto trader. My suggestion is look into Repeat Order traders. You can specify how much storage to fill up and how much to sell for.

I am worried that that would make my list of ships unbearably long. I like to be able to tuck them away into stations/mimic fleets. Assuming that I could use any of the orders with a fresh pilot, what would you recommend? I use a mod to remove the skill barrier for orders, the AI is hard enough to wrangle without those limits.

[Aieonae]

For all I care L class are a bit harder to kill. And can spew tonnes of mk2 laser tower.

[Charles]

Originally posted by trooperrob:

Agreed, Egosoft should look into prioritisation.

Originally posted by mikemonger:

Large traders would only really be effective if the station manager could do "routes".

I agree with that sentiment. The large traders/miners need a different AI to truly reach their potential. I find real world logic just does not apply to X4 logistics. For instance a Walmart semi truck wouldn't be caught hauling a couple pallets of pop tarts. They would throw dozens of other items inside to fill up the space. Especially if it is all headed to the same store.

I think this logic would work especially well for trade stations forwarding their supplies further down the line. Similar things would be nice for other situations.

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by Charles:

I am worried that that would make my list of ships unbearably long. I like to be able to tuck them away into stations/mimic fleets. Assuming that I could use any of the orders with a fresh pilot, what would you recommend? I use a mod to remove the skill barrier for orders, the AI is hard enough to wrangle without those limits.

So I've done two large trade empires over my course of playing. One was essentially all traders in my list and the other station based traders. There are a few ways you can work around having a large list of ships.

The first way is assigning a second ship to them so then they become a fleet. This can be a small ship that never undocks. Not the greatest but it will cut your list down if that is a concern.

Second way you can make your list more manageable is by adopting a naming system. I rely on this heavily for my game playthroughs. In one game a LT might be a local trader while a DW might be a ware distributor(not the command just the function for both.) Using naming systems you can actually filter all your ships the same way you filter your map. This is also helpful if you also adopt a naming system for your stations.

So a typical game of mine will have stations with lots of subordinates that I don't care what they're called. I keep a rough number of traders/miners per station and I can see at a glance if that station is missing ships. Extra ships I keep in a fleet called "Spare traders" "Spare Miners". I then name my ships based off of what they do. Function Ware Area Super(if large) and number.

So: DW Hull Parts Argon Prime Super 04

Super long but I know it's taking hull parts to Argon Prime, is a large trader, and I have at least 3 others doing the same thing. Then if I ever need to monitor them all I have to do is filter by DW Hull Parts and it'll show up. I can also filter by sector to see what all I have assigned to do activities there.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Pandorian:

[
Second way you can make your list more manageable is by adopting a naming system.

I use a naming system for fleets and stations. However I had no idea that I could use the search function to sort them, That is really useful! I had been using a alphanumerical system. For instance L01-whatever else I want in the name. All the L01 prefixes will show up together. That lets me know they are logistics and they are type 1 which could be whatever I want. Also you can use the * at the start of a name to force it to the top of the list. I use that with all of my personal ships/fleets.

Do you have any recommendations on service crew for traders/miners? I tend to fill them up because its cheap at my shipyard. However I noticed too many crew causes lag in the crew menu. I want this game to last a while so I am trying to have a minimal impact on performance.

[Pandorian]

Originally posted by Charles:

Do you have any recommendations on service crew for traders/miners? I tend to fill them up because its cheap at my shipyard. However I noticed too many crew causes lag in the crew menu. I want this game to last a while so I am trying to have a minimal impact on performance.

I try not to use that menu because it is very laggy. Crew usually level on their own so I don't usually bother filling ships with higher level Engineering. If a ship contains marines I'll put marines in the name so I can filter it. I use a lot of seminars to make 2 star pilots and managers as they are extremely common at station traders. Station managers usually level fast for me as I use trading/mining stations and I never need pilots higher than 2 stars due to assigning them to those stations. If I do need higher level pilots I usually start searching for pre-existing pilots in my miners or suffer through the empire crew list. Other than that I don't really have any good suggestions on making that list more manageable.

EDIT: Also later on you get access to terraforming flight school so you can just train pilots easy.

[Charles]

Originally posted by Pandorian:

I try not to use that menu because it is very laggy.

That makes sense, It does not really seem to impact performance otherwise. I also don't use it very often. Thanks for all the advice, it was very helpful and I appreciate it.