how to sell station goods

[kirb]

hi, i'm getting into station building for the first time, with a profit motive of course. i have a computronic substrate factory in the asteroid belt and a solar power plant at mercury. the solar power plant has a baldric to transport power cells to the computronic factory, and the computronic factory has like 8 mineral bolos and a gas bolo (reused from previous profit scheme) as well as it's own baldric set to auto trade for the station as a subordinate.

however... the station is... not very profitable. not in the slightest, at least compared to my previous setup of just having a roving mining swarm which made dozens of millions in relatively short order. Sure, the station drops me 4 mil every hour or so, but that's far less than the mining swarm. I believe, however, that this might be in part due to the selling practices. currently the only way the station sells anything is by having npc traders come by and, by chance, purchase computronics in extremely small quantities. there's a lot of stations around the solar system that desperately want computronics, but the auto trading baldric just... doesn't do anything. the only trade it will ever do is buying tens of thousands of solar cells from random terran power plants, but it doesn't do that anymore after i set up a trade restriction on the station's energy credit buy offer, so it just sits there doing nothing now saying auto trading failed because it couldn't find any matching deals or whatever. is there even a way to get a ship to deliver station product to any buyers in the area? or do i have to do it myself? or with manual orders? also, how can i make stations any more profitable? are there any 'catch-all" station types that are just good and some that are just bad? how can i know what the best good to produce in an area is? thanks in advance.

[climbingeastofwinter]

I'm not sure what your station trading fleet looks like but the AI station manager seems to take into account the ship class (or maybe speed/size/container capacity), and you may get different results by adding a couple small courier transports to your station trading fleet. Remember that computation substrate is ~8Kcr / 50u, so it runs pretty expensive per unit of cargo and it isn't often needed in exetremely large volumes. The buy offers may be so small relative to your tradeship capacity that the manager doesn't think its worth the effort. I saw some changes to my station behavior after adding small traders to a station that previously only had large trade ships servicing it.

[DaBa]

If you assign the ship as a trader, then the ship will definitely try to sell your station's products. But it will also try to buy products for the station. There are a few ways if you want the trader to only sell one product and not buy anything.

You could blacklist everything but computronic substrate in the assigned merchant's good list (behavior tab). You could configure the station so it only buys e-cells from your own faction (via trade rules) so the only two things merchant will do is sell the product and transport e-cells from that mercury station. Or you could also play around with the prices, so you buy e-cells for too low a price for anybody to want to sell to you other than your own transports. It depends on how you want the finer details to work.

As for the station not being profitable, I don't know what to tell you. Even if you're buying every resource needed to make something from third party factions, it will still be profitable to then sell the product (unless you're selling at rock bottom prices). Also it is never more profitable to sell raw ore than to process it into something and then sell the final product. Unless for whatever reason the end product just doesn't have any buyers. You can do the math yourself if you don't believe me.

[kirb]

Originally posted by DaBa:

If you assign the ship as a trader, then the ship will definitely try to sell your station's products. But it will also try to buy products for the station. There are a few ways if you want the trader to only sell one product and not buy anything.

You could blacklist everything but computronic substrate in the assigned merchant's good list (behavior tab). You could configure the station so it only buys e-cells from your own faction (via trade rules) so the only two things merchant will do is sell the product and transport e-cells from that mercury station. Or you could also play around with the prices, so you buy e-cells for too low a price for anybody to want to sell to you other than your own transports. It depends on how you want the finer details to work.

I've already set it up so the traders won't buy anything (trade restriction, can only buy from my own faction) from npcs but the problem is they won't sell to npcs either, which has no restriction. they just fly in circles saying no matching trades despite there being a wharf one jump over buying computronics for way higher than my own buying price.

[kirb]

Originally posted by climbingeastofwinter:

I'm not sure what your station trading fleet looks like but the AI station manager seems to take into account the ship class (or maybe speed/size/container capacity), and you may get different results by adding a couple small courier transports to your station trading fleet. Remember that computation substrate is ~8Kcr / 50u, so it runs pretty expensive per unit of cargo and it isn't often needed in exetremely large volumes. The buy offers may be so small relative to your tradeship capacity that the manager doesn't think its worth the effort. I saw some changes to my station behavior after adding small traders to a station that previously only had large trade ships servicing it.

that didn't seem to work, as cargo ships of all sizes, S to L, will do the same thing of flying in circles saying no matching trades

[DaBa]

Originally posted by kirbcake:

Originally posted by DaBa:

If you assign the ship as a trader, then the ship will definitely try to sell your station's products. But it will also try to buy products for the station. There are a few ways if you want the trader to only sell one product and not buy anything.

You could blacklist everything but computronic substrate in the assigned merchant's good list (behavior tab). You could configure the station so it only buys e-cells from your own faction (via trade rules) so the only two things merchant will do is sell the product and transport e-cells from that mercury station. Or you could also play around with the prices, so you buy e-cells for too low a price for anybody to want to sell to you other than your own transports. It depends on how you want the finer details to work.

I've already set it up so the traders won't buy anything (trade restriction, can only buy from my own faction) from npcs but the problem is they won't sell to npcs either, which has no restriction. they just fly in circles saying no matching trades despite there being a wharf one jump over buying computronics for way higher than my own buying price.

If they won't sell it then there may be no deals in the range of the trader's operating distance (you can check how many jumps away it can go in the behavior tab). Maybe they are too far away, or maybe there just isn't enough demand right now? Maybe your price is too high for the current market? Or maybe you have set things up in a way where they are not able to do those trades. Maybe you have a trade rule set up that prohibits the sale of those products to other factions too, easy to make those by mistake and forget about them so double check.

Or maybe you have one of those situations where the station is experiencing some kind of material shortage and the manager is assigning the trader to only look for that one specific resource and nothing else but that, sort of panic mode to try and fill the shortage. The managers do prioritize supplying the station over selling their own goods. So make sure your energy cells are nicely topped up as to not to give the manager a heart attack about the supply running dry, or if you have built a habitat and now the station is creating demand for crew supplies that is not being met.

[braman]

manager need get more stars 1 star 1 sector jump for assigned ships maybe there are simply no offers to buy in the area, you can wait a bit and definitely the best sector to mine is the orta cloud, additionally, khaak often appears in the atheroid belt