The Importance of Trade Rules and Black Lists

An explanation of how to use Trade Rule and Blacklist to control your station miners/traders.

Trade Rules and Black List

A lot of people understand the concept of the trade rule. You can restrict the number of factions that can access certain things within your own enterprise. Restrict all factions comes immediately to mind, especially when trying to stockpile building/production resources for stations. You get that done and you're golden. Just assign some miners or freighters and they'll take care of all your needs, right?

Wrong.

Station managers, from 1 star to 5 star, all make the same mistake. They set their subordinates to auto-mine/auto-trade and let them run. So, now you've got a bunch of subordinates who are mining and trading and then selling wherever they dang well please. This is where black list comes in and it is an absolute perfect answer.

To use:
Open your Player Information Tab and select "Global Orders." It looks like this:



On the left side of this page, you'll see a list of items you can make rules for. You will need to set a trade rule first. The blank version is here:



First, you'll want to name the trade rule. I used "Demo Trade Rule" for this. Next, you'll see a tick box for three items. These boxes will change the default value of EVERYTHING YOU OWN that matches the category to this trade rule. Stations will switch all of their buying and selling to this rule if ticked if you tick the first. Station supply, the next tick, will change over all purchasing of supply goods (materials for construction or crafting of drones). The last will, I suppose, not allow the station to buy or sell ships to anyone. I've not used this option before because shipyards are a pain in the keister!
Finally, below these boxes, you'll have the "Restrict All Factions." When you select it, it will open a list that will populate with your faction on it. You can add other factions here (so, if you want Argon to trade but no one else).
Only tick these boxes if that's what you want to happen. Otherwise, leave them blank. For purposes of this guide, I've selected all of them.



As you can see, the station has now adopted the trade rule as default. You can change individual orders on the station as you see fit from here.



If you chose to leave the tick boxes blank, you will need to go through the stations information tab and change each individual setting separately. This can be beneficial if you only want to restrict some things.

Now, go back to your global orders and select Blacklist. Create a new rule, Blacklist #1. You'll see this when you click on the arrow:



Here, there are three selections.



First, sector travel will prevent the captain from flying into any sector you choose. You can select exact sectors, sectors owned by enemy factions (I believe this is triggered with relations bad enough for the faction to open fire on sight), and even sectors with dangerous areas that damage ships.



Second, sector activities narrows things down a bit from the first option. Sector travels tells your captain NEVER to go in there. Sector activities says: yes, you can go in there but don't do anything. This lets you have a trade route through enemy space if your ship is tough enough or fast enough to get through. Your ship won't stop to trade or fight or scan or look at the pretty nebulae. It'll just haul butt to the exit.



Finally, trade restictions is just that. It simply says "Don't trade with anyone who's not on the list!"
Here, you want to select "Restrict All Factions." You can set this as a global order for all civilian ships if you like or change each ship individually. I do individual since I have auto-miners and auto-traders feeding the faction stations as well.
For each ship, either trader or station subordinate, open their information screen and select Individual Instructions to see this:



Near the bottom, you will see the three types of blacklists discussed earlier. You can set each one individually so some ships have more freedom than others. The third entry is your Trade Restrictions. Use the drop down list to select the Blacklist you've created and, voila (which, according I-R0K, is french for: And then I found out), you've successfully restricted the ship to do only what you want it to do. Your orders countermand any other AI the ship might use so this entire page is very important.

Incorporating Auto-Trade

So, how do we expand on trade rules and blacklists? Add auto-trading!

Suppose you want your trade ship to disperse your supplies. You've done a good thing by building a food and medical station so you can keep the population on your sparkly Shipyard happy. But how do you get your pilot to go get those supplies from ONLY your stations and deliver them ONLY to your stations without you having to do all the work?

That's right, more restrictions.

First, you will need to have a 3-star pilot capable of Advanced Auto Trading. Without one of these, your trade route won't work. I know, it sucks.

Advanced Auto-Trading has a 10 sector limit. Your stations need to be within this range of each other or the trade route won't work. The AI, sadly, can't be programmed with a flight path; it chooses the shortest route based on travel restrictions but cannot use jump holes, only jump gates. So, keep that in mind.
So, you've got your medical supply station in Black Hole Sun V and your Shipyard in Heretic's End. Six sectors. Perfect. Well within our 10 sector limit. Open up your ship's Information then choose the behavior tab. You'll see this:



You want to change the default behavior from "Hold Position" (or whatever it currently is) to Advanced Auto-Trade. Notice the 3-star requirrment; if your pilot doesn't meet this, it won't be selectable. Once you choose Advanced Auto-Trade, you need to choose the ware. Click on Add/Remove Wares to get a list:



Choose Medical Supplies and click Select at the bottom to set the ware. You can select more than one item here. Just put a tick in every box you want.
Finally, you'll need to set an anchor point. This is the sector that determines the max jump range.



For this trade route, Argon Prime is the halfway point so select that. Remember that your anchor point MUST be withni 5 jumps gates of all stations. If you want to set a limit, say to keep your ship from flying to a different, further station, you can lower the jump gate limit from the anchor point.

If you add new stations between Heretic's End and Black Hole Sun V that either produce or need Medical Supplies, the trader will automatically incorporate them.

And there you go.

[Aieonae]

Thank you! You did great!

[Winter's Embers]

Okay, and done. Changed screenshots to full-sized pictures and expanded guide to two sections to accommodate the extra size. Everything seems to appear properly. Anything else, let me know.

[Winter's Embers]

Okay, done. The last 2 screenshots won't appear on screen properly right now for some weird reason but they're all there. Hope this revision helps!

[Aieonae]

Kudos! now get to work XD

[Winter's Embers]

Wow, talk about raising a guide from the dead! I had to reread it just to figure out what this was! When I wrote this, I didn't know how to do screenshots or videos. I've learned screenshots so I'll go back into the game and grab some for you.

[Aieonae]

you need pictures... i had just encountered a flounder that keep insisting game AI is wasted. when I ask him about blacklist and trade rules he literally have no idea...