Do trade restrictions prevent buying too (autotrade, not station)

[user1679]

I have a couple Baku flying around and wanted to increase my rep with MIN so I created a trade restriction (blacklist) to exclude all factions except MIN. I set the max buy/sell distance to max slider (I think mine is around 9) and applied the blacklist but my ships are constantly "searching for trades" despite both the Shipyard and Wharf having around 10 items they're buying. There are other stations selling these items in neigboring sectors but my traders don't seem to care.

[Feloidea]

Yes.

Something you can do is set up a trader on repeat orders to buy a high demand wares (Hull parts are always a good bet for ship production stations) and then sell it to the shipyard specifically. That will ensure it sells at the MIN station for rep gain and not run into issues of not finding buy trades. Since reputation gain doesn't care much how much you sell instead of how often, you can do this on a number of S couriers to cover a multitude of wares and it shouldn't break your bank committing a couple M or even larger traders just for the reputation increase.

[H34Dru5H]

I assume your trade restriction includes yourself as well as MIN so your traders will only buy and sell from and to your own stations or MIN stations. If you are trying to sell wares from your shipyards you need to set up sell orders for those wares at the shipyard and allocate a 'sell all but' amount so the station manager knows if there are spare wares to sell. You will also need to set 'buy up to' amounts otherwise the manager will think you don't need anymore of a particular item because you are trying to get rid of them. I think you may have more luck by not restricting too many factions, set the trade distance to 2 or 3 jumps and anchor your trade fleet at the heart of MIN territory. That way your traders will buy wares locally (best to set a ware list that MIN want) and be restricted to selling those wares locally, hopefully to the MIN.

[user1679]

Yes.

Something you can do is set up a trader on repeat orders to buy a high demand wares (Hull parts are always a good bet for ship production stations) and then sell it to the shipyard specifically. That will ensure it sells at the MIN station for rep gain and not run into issues of not finding buy trades. Since reputation gain doesn't care much how much you sell instead of how often, you can do this on a number of S couriers to cover a multitude of wares and it shouldn't break your bank committing a couple M or even larger traders just for the reputation increase.

Thanks for the tip, I always forget about the repeat orders option. I will try that.

[user1679]

I assume your trade restriction includes yourself as well as MIN so your traders will only buy and sell from and to your own stations or MIN stations. If you are trying to sell wares from your shipyards you need to set up sell orders for those wares at the shipyard and allocate a 'sell all but' amount so the station manager knows if there are spare wares to sell. You will also need to set 'buy up to' amounts otherwise the manager will think you don't need anymore of a particular item because you are trying to get rid of them. I think you may have more luck by not restricting too many factions, set the trade distance to 2 or 3 jumps and anchor your trade fleet at the heart of MIN territory. That way your traders will buy wares locally (best to set a ware list that MIN want) and be restricted to selling those wares locally, hopefully to the MIN.

Thanks for the advice but I don't currently have any stations. As for the anchor system, I noticed my traders don't seem to follow that very well. I had one of them anchored to Argon Prime with 5 gate buy/sell limit and noticed that when the ship flew to Black Hole Sun IV to pick up some wares, it sold those wares to another station in Black Hole Sun IV then started "searching for wares". It located a buy order in Memory of Profit, purchased the wares then flew off to MoP to sell. But if Argon Prime is my anchor and the limit is 5 gates, this buy/sell order should never have been chosen because there is no 5 gate path to get into MoP from Argon Prime. It almost seems as if the gate limit is used from wherever the ship begins searching regardless of anchor space.

[Nanook]

Memory of Profit is only 4 systems (gates) from Argon Prime if your pilot takes the 'northern' route. Remember, gates are only on the edges of systems. Superhighways and Accelerators don't count. It goes Argon Prime -> Hatikvah's Choice -> Silent Witness -> Eighteen Billion -> Memory of Profit. Hope that helps clear things up.

[user1679]

Memory of Profit is only 4 systems (gates) from Argon Prime if your pilot takes the 'northern' route. Remember, gates are only on the edges of systems. Superhighways and Accelerators don't count. It goes Argon Prime -> Hatikvah's Choice -> Silent Witness -> Eighteen Billion -> Memory of Profit. Hope that helps clear things up.

Thanks, I was accidentally counting Hatikvah's Choice III in the route because I had the map zoomed out far enough that the connecting line went over the corner of it.

Also, I think I figured out how to do this with advanced autotrade. I set the home system to Eighteen Billion, then added the wares that the station was buying, set the "distance to sell" to 0 and "distance to buy" to max. My ship flew a few sectors away to buy some stuff and bring it back to the MIN Shipyard.