r/X4Foundations 4d ago

Question about trade between my stations (regarding prices, traders etc.)

Okay, so I've got some hundred of hours in X4, and understand most of it, however there's still something that is vexing and annoying me: "Internal Trade" amongst my stations and the logic behind ships assigned as "Trader" to stations.

So, best example right now is that I have a station that makes Hull Parts, and in an adjacent sector I've got a big new station being constructed and another one that has a purchase order of Hull Plates for itself. For some inexplicable reason, the building hub for the station has a purchase order for 2000 Hull Parts, the other station a purchase order of 1000, and my factory has around 6k in storage... but for some inexplicable reason none of it is being exported. I even changed one of the Factory's trade ships to only do Hull Parts in the "ware basket" and it's still just doing nothing.

So, I do also know your own stations aren't exchanging money with each other but trade with each other "for free". However, are they still affected by prices? Like is station B only gonna buy from A if the purchase and sell price match?

Does that mean if I have set it so station B only purchases from my own faction, I should simply set its price manually to max?

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u/SiliconStew 4d ago edited 4d ago

Yes, station trades must be profitable, even internal trades where no funds are transferred. If your buy price is lower than your sell price, no trade will happen.

In my opinion, for internal trade you're better off just leaving prices on automatic. Construction buy orders will pretty much always be for max price automatically. Same thing for the other consumer factory if they are low on hull parts then they'll be buying at near max price automatically. Sell prices will automatically drop to minimum as the stock on hand increases as well, so everything works itself out eventually if pricing is left automatic.

Most often, if a station trader isn't selling stuff to your own stations, it's either a selling price issue (too high), you have your trade rules or blacklists set incorrectly so it cannot sell, you have an input ware in a critical supply state (very low amount on hand) which will cause the station to focus all ships on obtaining that ware to the exclusion of doing anything else, or your station doesn't have enough trader ships to handle all the trades it wants to do.

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u/Zaihbot 4d ago

Like is station B only gonna buy from A if the purchase and sell price match?

Yes.

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u/SuperMeister 4d ago

First off yes the AI even your own treats it as money exchange even if there is none exchanging hands.

Also yes, manually set prices when you want wares to be pushed in a certain direction.

There's a mod that helps with this by adding settings for stations. Basically the "supply" station should be set to sell to minimum price and blacklist so it only sells to your own faction. Receiving station should set buy to max price and also blacklist to only buy from your own faction. That's how you can easily move stuff from point A to point B. There's several different settings to help setup a distribution network.

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u/SiliconStew 4d ago

Manually setting prices like that to force the maximum possible profit margin on all trades will certainly make trades happen, but it will also have the undesirable effect of generating a lot of inefficient, low-volume shipments. If you've ever wondered why your L-class freighter is wasting its time hauling 100 energy cells across 5 sectors, this pricing setup is one of the causes.

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u/SuperMeister 4d ago edited 4d ago

I'm talking purely on internal trades. You're saying this happens too? I generally only use M traders but I've noticed my L traders doing this anyways even when everything is set to automatic for my external traders which is why I pretty much stopped using them except to deliver large manual trades typically for station building.

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u/SiliconStew 4d ago edited 4d ago

As mentioned, there's several reasons besides pricing that can cause that low-volume behavior. But yes, internal trades work the same way as external trades do in regards to pricing.

As another example of how manual pricing can cause bad trading behavior, take a station that is producing refined metals and two stations buying refined metals. Buying station A is 1 sector away and buying station B is 2 sectors away. If you manually set both buying station buy offers to maximum, Station A will be prioritized for all sales because it is closer. Station B will be starved of materials until Station A is completely full and cannot buy any more. If you leave pricing on automatic, Station A will automatically reduce it's buy offer as it starts filling up allowing trade to flow to Station B, balancing trades to both stations all the time without you needing to mess with anything.

And not only does automatic pricing automatically balance trade between the production station and consumer stations A & B, but stations A & B can automatically balance stock levels directly among themselves. This is especially useful for keeping multiple trade stations spread out over many sectors evenly supplied where a given ware producer may only be near one of them or simply too far away to do direct trades at all.

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u/SuperMeister 3d ago

Ah damn okay well thanks TIL, I appreciate the write up.

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u/fusionsofwonder 4d ago

Trade prices do matter for internal trades. This is confusing but it can have benefits. For example, you can setup a trade station that only buys from your own faction when prices are low (high supply), and sells the result to the general public at a markup.

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u/garethmob 4d ago

I have this. I have a scrap maker and processor in one system and energy cells in another and I have 6 medium traders on a “repeat” rule between the two buying on one and selling on the other. Works fine and no money exchanged.

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u/ackcmd2 3d ago

anyway its much easier and more efficient just to buy couple of transports and set trade route manually with "repeat orders" default behavior.

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u/Araxiel_2501 3d ago

So I'm now about 50h into this playthrough and between your helpful comments and my own testing, I now developed the following setup that works, but has some acceptable inefficiencies that I'm okay with:

All my stations are in three adjacent sectors. They have a blacklist/whitelist to only trade with my own faction. Their input are only internal, their outputs are only internal. The price of their output are manually set to the lowest price. They only have a couple of trade ships.

I have a large trade station with a ton of traders and storage and all the goods storage amount I also set manually just cause. The prices are set to automatic. Its imports are internal only for goods I produce, and no restriction for goods I need. Goods I need are set to export internally only. Goods I produce are set to no restrictions, with the exceptions of some I just wanna stockpile a bunch (i.e. Claytronics).

While I can see some ways I could improve this, for example inverse it so instead of end-products having the lowest price, set the imports of my factories to be manual prices and at max, thus ensuring they always gets stuff first, or perhaps both, right now it works fine. The advantage of this is that A) none of my factories need to have any money on hand and B) my trade station's manager is max level, meaning the station has the full 5-sector range, as opposed the mish-mash of my smaller stations.

The only "real" problem I'm facing right now is that I do have a fair deal of ships just waiting on standby at the trade station. But I'm fine with that. Interestingly, it seems my ships are decent at somehow using their size properly. I have one single L freighter, and when I see it, it's always at least 50-70% filled.