How does trade work?

[SharkPlush]

I have two stations. One makes energy cells and sells them, the other buys them. Both have trade restrictions so only my ships can use them and are priced at 10c.

The first has its subordinate "buying" the cells and "selling" them to the 2nd station (the depot)

however subordinate trade ships of the 2nd station say there are no trades when their station is full of e cells and surrounded by customers.

I am essentially trying to figure out some kind of distribution network using 2 star managers. The 1 3-star pilot I have does use the depot to make trades, but not the depot's own transports.

[Konril]

If you have the station manager selling only to your own faction, that manager is only going to send his ships to trade with your own faction's stations. The independent traders work fine because they are also your own faction so the trade is allowed. What you will need to do is to allow the factions you want to trade with to trade with that depot station. You may also want to set the sell price either automatic or what you actually want the ware to sell for. Once you do, as long as the destination station is buying for more then your station is selling for, the manager will assign one of her traders to trade with the station.

Yes, that does mean the manager is also going to sell to NPC traders of the allowed factions. So I do recommend selling at either an automatic or a high price if you want to be greedy.

[SharkPlush]

Ah thank you, that's clarifying. I had tried that configuration but didn't connect exactly why they were behaving that way.

The "problem" was, with trading allowed yes it works, subordinates do make sales runs I've seen it, my PIO buddies come make trades, but now the depot's subordinates spend most/all their time stocking it for them. If I set the sale price higher than the nearby stations offer, nobody buys and my guys cant sell.

"Problem" with that being the sell price needs to be below the lowest station buying (we want to serve all of them as much as possible); which will be a decreasing number as we saturate the market. A whole bunch of profit will be lost because stations had better offers but we undercut them?

Basically what we want is no storefront and instead a door to door salesman. So my compromise is this: I'll have a ship (A Baldric) with repeat orders hit every station in range in series selling only some of its inventory each time and then restock at the depot.

[SiliconStew]

If only trading between your own stations, I'd recommend leaving the pricing on Automatic. All trades are chosen based on profit (profit margin between buying and selling, percentage of ship's cargo to be filled by order, distance between buyer and seller), so if your manual pricing is out of whack, no trades will happen. And because self-trade does not transfer any money, the buy/sell price of wares being self-traded is irrelevant. Setting a selling price to minimum also tends to cause issues for self trade, because it's typically paired with a buy price set to maximum that will cause all trades to be at a maximum profit margin, so you wind up with a constant stream of inefficient, low-volume trades occurring.

They way I set it up is on the production station, set the sell order Trade Rule to "self-only" and leave the sell pricing on Automatic. On the trade station, set the buy order Trade Rule to "self-only" and leave the buy pricing on Automatic. You can set the sell order on the trade station to whatever you want. The other benefit to this is if you have a second trade station with buy orders set the same way, and your sell orders on the trade stations allow trading with yourself, the two trade stations can exchange goods between them automatically to keep each others stock relatively balanced. This is also how you extend your trade reach because wares can flow production station -> trade station 1 -> trade station 2, even if the production station and trade station 2 are too far away from each other to trade directly.

Another thing to know is that any station with production modules will prioritize its subordinate traders to purchase input wares that are low on stock and drone parts over sales of output goods. So depending on current circumstances, this means the station may not even be attempting to sell anything with its own ships (though NPC's or other stations of yours can still send their own ships to buy wares). This is why trade stations should not have anything but docks and storage modules.

[db48x]

Originally posted by SharkPlush:

"Problem" with that being the sell price needs to be below the lowest station buying (we want to serve all of them as much as possible); which will be a decreasing number as we saturate the market. A whole bunch of profit will be lost because stations had better offers but we undercut them?

No. If your station is selling at 10Cr and the destination is buying at 16Cr, then one of your ships will pay 10Cr each and go sell them for 16Cr each. It will then have 6Cr in its own account. But ships maintain a balance of zero at all times; any profit they make is immediately sent to their superior. For a trader that is working as a subordinate for a station, that means that they give 10Cr to the station to buy the energy cell, then gives it 6Cr later when it realizes the profit. The net effect is that the station earns the whole sale price of the ware no matter what price floor you set.

The only reason to set the station’s sale price higher than the minimum is to prevent small deliveries using big ships. For example, if your minimum price is 10Cr and the destination station is buying 200 @ 11Cr then any subordinate ship, even a giant slow L ship, can be tasked to take 200 energy cells to them. If you had set a minimum sale price of 15Cr then the destination station would have had to wait until they used more of their stock and their buy price rose above 15Cr. This utilizes your trade ships better but does leave some opportunity for NPC stations to undercut you. But it's better to use S or sometimes M traders with energy cells, since demand is constant and cells are only 1m³ each. Better to use the L traders for goods that are ordered in bulk, like claytronics.

[SharkPlush]

Thank you for that clarification, I was definitely overthinking it.

>any profit they make is immediately sent to their superior.

That I did see and it made me laugh. I did a little "muhahahaha space slaves" and then kept going.

[SharkPlush]

So you're saying the commodity price at a station fluctuates just based on that station's stock which is good to know. I have a Baldric, one stolen PE, and the Callisto as my sales ships.

[db48x]

Originally posted by SharkPlush:

That I did see and it made me laugh. I did a little "muhahahaha space slaves" and then kept going.

Yep! Notice that they have no salaries…

Originally posted by SharkPlush:

So you're saying the commodity price at a station fluctuates just based on that station's stock which is good to know. I have a Baldric, one stolen PE, and the Callisto as my sales ships.

Yep. Instead of trying to simulate a full economy with supply and demand, prices are purely based on local demand. Each ware has a fixed range of prices, and each station that needs that ware sets its own price directly from its own stock level. Empty storage = highest price, full storage = lowest price. It’s a simple rule that has complex enough behavior to be fun while being easy to compute.