Manticore is blind to salvage lying a stone throw away.

[Kitet]

I'm playing base game, I made 3 scrap recycling factories in 3 Xenon entry point systems so that I have endless supply of freshly made scrap. I forgot about The Void / Frontier Edge gate and Xenon destroyed half of the former, spilling into neighboring system and gaining access to highway basically spreading everywhere, attacking my little haulers even far from those entry points.

As a revenge, I now built another factory right at the mentioned gate, on The Void side. Literally, whatever comes across is picked up by my 15 Odyseusses that HOP intended to throw one by one at Faulty Logic. I could not watch that, so every time they sent one to the two defence stations to die in seconds, I intercepted it midway and made it mine. The fleet is working marvelously, producing heaps of scrap.

My manticore, however, doesn't see that. It enters Frontier Edge for anything that became scrap over there. Of course it dies at every attempt, which is annoying. I made two individual blacklists for it so that it can neither travel nor perform activities outside of The Void.

It now always has this orange mark on it, when I hover over it, it says 'can't find usable scrap in range'....

When I order it to pick up the fresh Type-P body, hanging literally in front of it, it does so happily, delivers to the bin and starts not-seeing any other scrap again, until I order it to pick a specific piece of it.

Why is that? Do they have minimum distance from their Commander station? If so, why? What else could be affecting it so it can find scrap 4 sectors away but not 4km away?

[eMYNOCK]

the orange failed order should tell you exactly when it happened.

my bet, during some point in the past it was unable to find a wreck, made a notice, colored it bright orange and you stubled across it relatively recently.

if this was a one timer you can dismiss this notification via the failed orders that are to be found in the orders list.

if it happens again you should check why it happens, thats by the way the sole reason for the orange notification.

"Ey Boss, i had trouble, mind to take a look?"
(You can safely ignore it.)

additionally:
the range of your Traders and Salvage Ships is tied directly to the Manager Level of the Station they are assigned to.
From 1 Star (Jump) to 5 Star (5 Jumps).

[Tommytools]

Do you have any blacklists preventing activities in hazardous sectors? If those are assigned to your manticores they'll avoid salvaging in the void (as it is considered a hazardous sector) even if their recycling plant is in there.

[DaBa]

Literally just made two salvage stations in Split territory today, manticorers are working as expected when assigned to stations, they pick up ship wrecks and scrap cubes alike.

As the person above suggested, maybe it's some blacklist? It's fair so say you must be doing something wrong somewhere. Which is all too easy to do in this game so don't worry about it.

[Kitet]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985120287

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

the orange failed order should tell you exactly when it happened.

It does, it says 0 min ago.

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

my bet, during some point in the past it was unable to find a wreck, made a notice, colored it bright orange and you stubled across it relatively recently.

I don't know if you've read my entire original post, I admit I should have made it more succint, but I wrote the thing repeats 'salvage not found in range', doesn't tow anything ever automatically, doesn't say exactly why - or I just don't understand what is written on that screenshot I posted. Note how on that screenshot there's many stuff hanging around waiting to be grabbed, but no. Manticore floats around and picks nothing up.

Other Manticores always tow something, and if there's nowhere to drop it off, they display orange symbol until there's demand on the factory again. That I understand and I only wish they wouldn't loiter where regular shooting happens, instead just return to the 'doorstep' of their respective fabs... but that's another story.

Blacklists I created for the topical Manticore in The Void are:
1. Travel blacklist, has 3 adjacent sectors to The Void listed and nothing else, nothing like 'dangerous' or 'enemy' sectors.
2. Activities blacklist, same as above.
3. they're pinned individually to the Manticore, they're not made default for any kind of ship.

I made those blacklist speficically because this one ship would travel somewhere to collect wrecks while it had abundant harvest right next to the factory. I literally create more salvage than I can chew. It should go 4km, pick up, drop, repeat. Instead my factory is starved. Again, I can manually point it to the nearest wreckage and it will grab it, remove the orange message automatically, deliver, then after a minute or two it will display the orange text again. I can watch and wonder why all day and be none the wiser.

[eMYNOCK]

show us these blacklists.

i'm especially interessted in activities and travel.

[Kitet]

Originally posted by eMYNOCK:

show us these blacklists.

i'm especially interessted in activities and travel.

Of course. Here they both are and how I assigned them to the ship in question. I can't stress enough, however, that these blacklists came to be exactly because the ship would not pick up wrecks lying around and would travel 'abroad' instead. I do hope it's some misunderstanding on my part that can be fixed though.
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985219555
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985219498
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2985220021

[Tommytools]

Hmm... maybe try setting the blacklists to restrict all sectors? It will change the specific sectors you list to the only sectors they can travel/do activities in. Just restrict all and set the Void as the only place they are allowed to be in.

The current setup should work, in theory at least, but I don't know what the AI is doing "under the hood" so to speak. Right now it isn't working as expected, so I'm just trying to come up with possible solutions.

[Kitet]

Originally posted by Tommytools:

Hmm... maybe try setting the blacklists to restrict all sectors? It will change the specific sectors you list to the only sectors they can travel/do activities in. Just restrict all and set the Void as the only place they are allowed to be in.

The current setup should work, in theory at least, but I don't know what the AI is doing "under the hood" so to speak. Right now it isn't working as expected, so I'm just trying to come up with possible solutions.

Thank you for the suggestion, I'll of course try it right away.

[eMYNOCK]

Originally posted by Tommytools:

Hmm... maybe try setting the blacklists to restrict all sectors? It will change the specific sectors you list to the only sectors they can travel/do activities in. Just restrict all and set the Void as the only place they are allowed to be in.

The current setup should work, in theory at least, but I don't know what the AI is doing "under the hood" so to speak. Right now it isn't working as expected, so I'm just trying to come up with possible solutions.

Indeed, the current setup should work.
Why it isn't is beyond me.

Means, i have to back your whitelist suggestion... for both Lists.

Though, i think what is happening is that the Manticores get confused by the one-way Highway in Savage Spur and are looking for scrap they can not reach.

[DaBa]

Check if your station has a manager, that's the easiest mistake to make and it will cause this exact problem. Especially if you use a mod that turns off upkeep missions and you no longer get reminders to assign them.

[Kitet]

Originally posted by DaBa:

Check if your station has a manager, that's the easiest mistake to make and it will cause this exact problem. Especially if you use a mod that turns off upkeep missions and you no longer get reminders to assign them.

Base game. Vanilla. 3 setups like this already making me lots of money, not to mention used to fund the fourth site. No problems there except ships flying to their doom sometimes, given the location it's understandable it happens. Also, from the screens I posted it is clear manager is present, but yeah, if I have to explicitly say, the station has a manager, albeit an ugly fella.

I think when the site started and there was no solid storage yet, the ship showed an orange message but with 'no purchase offers in range' or something similar, same as when solid storage is full on a working setup. So no, it's not this exact problem. In my case it doesn't want to tow anything, in case you mention the ship would tow something and has nowhere to dump it.

About the whitelist - no change. I will fold up that base and move it somewhere farther from that gate. It only makes me glue my eyes to the map and observe the thing as it does effectively nothing when not pushed. And it was the only Manticore I actually used money to buy... pity.

[Tommytools]

Maybe a risky test, but might be worth seeing what happens when you remove the blacklists and let the manticores do their thing. Seeing where they go when not restricted might help determining what is going on.

Another suggestion (A bit of a long shot and you might have tried this already) is un-assigning all manticores and reassigning them. I sometimes have ships sitting around picking their noses if I assign them to a station under construction, reassigning them when the manager generates a "need type of ship" maintenance mission tends to fix it.

[Kitet]

Originally posted by Tommytools:

Maybe a risky test, but might be worth seeing what happens when you remove the blacklists and let the manticores do their thing. Seeing where they go when not restricted might help determining what is going on.

Another suggestion (A bit of a long shot and you might have tried this already) is un-assigning all manticores and reassigning them. I sometimes have ships sitting around picking their noses if I assign them to a station under construction, reassigning them when the manager generates a "need type of ship" maintenance mission tends to fix it.

On the first part - originally there was no blacklist and the ship was picking stuff right where I wanted it, or at least I think so. I initially bought quite small plot just to tell my destroyers to 'protect it until further notice', it cost me a lot of money on that spot, but spilling Xenon everywhere was far more costly, I needed to pay it. When I decided to build a station in that plot I just got one solar plant and all the setup needed for salvage to work. It worked, for a time. It produced, albeit slowly, materials for its own construction, which is totally cool.

Then I needed to expand that plot, and I did so in two directions - both away from the gate. At the same time I built another scrap processor and removed the old one when the 2nd was ready, because I wanted to better utilise available constraints of this plot (basically made the base more flat). All I need now is more solar power modules, I use around 20 on other bases.

I think it is at that time that I noticed manticore going abroad. This is why I think I need to abandon that plot and buy a new one, slightly farther, of a proper size from the start. I think there's no problem, I'll waste some time and maybe some processed scrap, I'm up for it.

[Kitet]

I moved the factory back around 20 kilometers. It costed me 1.4 million for the darn plot of aproppriate size. I moved all te resources and basically built it as the old one got dismantled. Took me whole day, which was somehow mega pirate-bountiful.

The problematic Manticore says it can't find that heap of wrecks piling up before the gate so it's almost half-visible. Instead, when I removed its blacklists, it travels through the gate I'm using to produce scrap and becomes scrap itself. I give up. Or maybe I'll try on the other side. But The Void is a no-go for a scrap factory and a mystery as to why. I have yet to actually delete the old, now empty, plot, I'll check tomorrow if this changes something.

[Tommytools]

The only thing I have left to suggest is posting on the Egosoft forums with a save (uploaded to a file hosting service) so the devs can have a look, maybe they can figure out what is going on here.