Auto-Trade ships not working

[Winter's Embers]

Several occasions now I have tried to get my Demeter Sentinel's to perform auto-trade activities. I've given them HOP faction only restrictions (to build my HOP rep), I've cleared the fog of war from all HOP systems (except lasting vengeance which is in progress), I've disco'd all stations in HOP systems, and purchased the faction trade subscription for 10M.
Both captain's are two-star level, have full crews, and empty holds. I have assigned them to fill shortages with varying amounts of goods (from just hull parts or soja husks to all wares in HOP space) and also local trade. My ships fly around in a tight circle. The information bar says the ship is "Searching for trades" and this is where both ships bog down and get stuck, just repeating the circle indefinitely. I can issue an order and it interrupts the cycle. I even had a ship move systems when I switched it from fill shortages to local trade and set the anchor in True Sight while the ship was currently circling itself in Holy Vision. The ship flew around for about a minute, searching for trades, then I got an orange alert saying the shop failed at the task. It then flew from Holy Vision to True Sight with orders to local trade Soja Husks. Instead of flying to the Husk factory, it dropped off the highway and started circling again, looking for trades.
Anyone know what's going on? This stuff was working just fine on an earlier save when I turned off Kingdom's End so I could play through the PHQ quest again. This new save was started with KE active.
All other aspects are exactly the same, including mods used which are:

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990220210

Any information or assistance would be appreciated.

[Rooter]

Im learning myself, but I think you need to get 3 star pilots to get an extended range.
You might not have resources in range.
I had same prob till i got 3 star pilots.
It shows the range in the behaviour tab i think

[Winter's Embers]

Has nothing to do with range. As you can see, there's a fully stocked soja husk factory within the ship's radar range and still it doesn't initiate a trade:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990283411
This is about the function not actually working at all.

[Knottypine]

You have your anchor space in True Sight, and a failure warning saying no trades found in allowed sectors. Local AutoTrade will perform trades in the one sector it's assigned to. Have your confirmed that there is a place to sell soja husk for a profit? The ship may not perform any trades if there is no profit.

[Winter's Embers]

A) That's a screenshot of True Sight.
B) That soja husk factory had prices in the green.
C) Almost every station was in desperate need of food since the system is under constant attack and traders aren't faring well.
But, as I said in my original posting, this isn't just happening for one sector, one ship, or one particular time. It has been an ongoing issue across a dozen sectors now, with or without satellites, with or without trade subscriptions.

[Sticky Wicket]

Autotrade doesn't really work. It's better to set default behaviour *repeat* and manually set places to buy/sell (Sectors, factories).

You also need to make sure there is a buy offer at the place you want to sell to that wants the stuff in sufficient amounts (look at the paces buy offer and see the amount they want); thus setting several places to sell is always a good idea or just set *sector* to sell in if there are lots of choices.

[blackphoenixx]

Did you set any blacklists that conflict? If it's not the prices (autotraders only buy below average and sell above average) that's the only other factor i can currently think of that'd cause that "no trades found in allowed sectors" error.

Originally posted by Sticky Wicket:

Autotrade doesn't really work. It's better to set default behaviour *repeat* and manually set places to buy/sell (Sectors, factories).

Autotraders waste some time on finding trades, but if there are trades it's usually not much.
The behavior does work if it's set up correctly, but there's some non-intuitive and undocumented things like the average price rule i mentioned above that you need to take into account.

Repeat orders are more efficient if you only want to trade one ware and i use them quite a bit, but autotraders win on flexibility (and being so much less hassle to set up).

Local autotrade is kind of useless though. It only has the ease of setup going for it.

[Winter's Embers]

I had a trade restriction set up for HOP only. I removed it. No help. And yes, auto-trade is, for the most part, useless and local auto-trade even more so, if you're trying for credits. I use them for 2 very simple reasons: boosting rep with a faction and boosting experience with the crew.
I've never run into a problem like this until I started playing 6.0. I just started a new game real quick (using creative setup to recreate the game I'm in) but turned off KE. Trading worked fine.
I went back to my other game, tried in every sector. I got a local autotrade to fire exactly once. The order was to local trade medical supplies and I parked it at the trade station in Holy Vision. The ship spun around, searching for orders, for 2 minutes, then popped up with a failed order. I checked the station... no medical supplies. Okay, cool. So, I checked the two medical supply stations. Both had generous supplies in with a dark green price (best). As I checked the first one (near the gate to True Sight), the ship set course and performed a buy command. It sold the goods on the other end of the sector near the Cardinal's Redress Jump Gate, then sat and spun again. I tried to open and close both stations again but this time, nothing. And so, the ship still sits, spinning in place, doing nothing 20 minutes later, with two fully stocked medical supply stations to buy from.

[Knottypine]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

I use them for 2 very simple reasons: boosting rep with a faction and boosting experience with the crew.

That being the case, I would have two other suggestions. Local AutoMine works much better than AutoTrade. As long as there is demand, your ship will pretty much keep doing that non-stop. Slowly (passively) increasing rep and training crew.

The second suggestion is to use Fill Shortages. You can still select Soja Husk for example, limit your ship to HOP only if that's who you want to build rep with, and let it do its thing. Works much better than AutoTrade in my experience.

[Sticky Wicket]

Originally posted by Knottypine:

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

I use them for 2 very simple reasons: boosting rep with a faction and boosting experience with the crew.

That being the case, I would have two other suggestions. Local AutoMine works much better than AutoTrade. As long as there is demand, your ship will pretty much keep doing that non-stop. Slowly (passively) increasing rep and training crew.

The second suggestion is to use Fill Shortages. You can still select Soja Husk for example, limit your ship to HOP only if that's who you want to build rep with, and let it do its thing. Works much better than AutoTrade in my experience.

Yep. This is the way.

Originally posted by blackphoenixx:

Local autotrade is kind of useless though. It only has the ease of setup going for it.

I never use it, and it seems to be prone to wierdness. It's best avoided

[conrado.lacerda]

Originally posted by Winter's Embers:

Has nothing to do with range. As you can see, there's a fully stocked soja husk factory within the ship's radar range and still it doesn't initiate a trade:
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2990283411
This is about the function not actually working at all.

A ship with autotrade won't do anything unless it has both a purchase and sale offer, so even if there are cheap Soja Husks available in this system, if there's no station buying at a decent price, the ship will remain idle.

On the other hand, with "fill shortages" the ship will fill its cargo with cheap wares and only then worry about selling them.

My own preferred method of trading is to use "fill shortages" with high-capacity ships like the Vulture Sentinel set to only one ware (creating trade fleets with "Mimic" as the need arises), and for autotrading I build a trade station in a central sector to save up on high-level captains.

[Winter's Embers]

As was stated in the original post, this started with the fill shortages orders, not local auto trade. I branched out to the auto-trade to see if the problem persisted. It did. It now is a problem with full auto-trade (3 star). When I asked for information and advice, it was about why the problem existed, not how to play the game. I thought I had made that pretty clear but I guess not.
So, please, I don't need advice how to play. I need to figure out why my game isn't working the way it is supposed to. Confine any responses to that, if you would. Thank you.

[conrado.lacerda]

You overestimate your writing skills, and apparently your knowledge of the game's mechanics.

[Despiser]

If you are ok with mods, random trader is easy, flexible and efficient, especially with large freighters.

[Pandorian]

Change wares to something else and see if the problem remains. Food trading has poor returns and is a dead market unless the player is actively creating demand.

[Winter's Embers]

Originally posted by conrado.lacerda:

You overestimate your writing skills, and apparently your knowledge of the game's mechanics.

And yet you do not address the actual issue that the system isn't working. Is it a bug? Is it known? Has it been reported? Do you know anything pertaining to an issue where the automatic trading features of the game simply fail to facilitate no matter how many different ways it is set up? Did you actually read the entirety of what I've written or did you just skim for key words and set up an automatic response?
Is that clear enough writing for you? Or shall I interpret into 23 different languages? (or have google translate do it, at any rate)