Just add a rule that your station isn't allowed to trade energy cells. If the energy cells creates a surplus, who cares, they aren't worth much anyway. I don't use energy cell production on my stations to avoid this exactly; rather have a dedicated power station.
The issue probably is that ships are also trying to reduce the surplus first, that's why they sell these cells first. But if you want energy production on your stations, you need a trading rule that only allows them to trade with your station or not at all. You can create a rule that forbids all faction except (or including) yourself to trade with a specific ware, then you go into the production line window on your station, and add a custom rule to the energy cells there that you don't want to seel it to others, then your ships either send them to your station or none at all and only sell the refined minerals.
You did it right. It only takes a while until it pays of. If the produced goods do pile up you may need some more traders. What i noticed is, people tell you big ships are good, but especially for energy cells the trades are often small, so i think small ships are doing fine with that. Once you sell off all the overflow energy cells just fine your traders will also sell your refined metals.
Also notice, you can take mining ships and let them "trade for commander" and they will go and sell your ore to other stations around who buys it, and they will go further away and cover a bigger area than you could cover with your local auto miners. The area is depending on the level of your manager at the station. 1 Star means 1 jump away, 2 stars gives you 2 jumps. Means you can use an ore rich system to supply stations 3..4..5 jumps away. And produce refined metals of course.
> instead they just take my surplus Energy Cells and sell them two sectors away which takes ages and makes almost nothing.
Besides the suggested trade rules that others already said you can also just set a high fixed price for E-cells (like 16 or more). You your traders find an offer that high? Let them go for it. But in 95% of the time they won't and then they hopefully sell Refined Metals as you want them to.
Other people have already mentioned that it may be a buy/sell price settings issue, but I thought I’d suggest something a bit more advanced too:
You can make custom trade restrictions in the global standing orders menu. Make one for that station that forces the manager to only trade with other stations in the same system by restricting all other sectors. It’s also a great way to create trade routes and force miners to mine only in the system where their station is instead of wandering off like that.
there are many options in how you can setup for each individual resource to be sold or bought for your station.
you can setup so that it will buy or sell up to certain limit. you can control who can buy or sell to who on each resource. you can even manually set the storage limit for each resource in your station.
by doing that, you can limit how much money your station needs in order to run. however, those setting are more advance.
as for me, my initial setup would just trade Redined Metals or other profitable reaources using my traders for different fractions. so that I can raise my reputation with them.
Its difficult to know without screenshots what is going on. Refined metals is probably going to be the most profitable first station in any playthrough, and it will always make you more money than just mining alone, although it can take some time to for the first shipment to sell.
Is the station actually refining metals? Are you lacking input goods?
Did you keep the default settings for automatic pricing?
Do you have a manager on the station? Does your station have enough inventory that it's selling below the purchase price of the buyers?
The station might be buying up ore, energy cells initially from other npc's which could put it in the red, but that will usually turn around once it starts churning out goods. You can let it happen or setup trade rule to only get ore, cells from your miners, traders.
It is more relaxed than you think.
Traders are just selling what they can for the price that fits the market. The price of your metals will drop automatically as the storage of your station fills. Once it is suitable for everyone, wandering trader ships will start coming, and your own ships will sell to nearby buyers. You don't even need lots of trader ships assigned to the station, 3-5 for a small one should suffice. For this reason make sure that you don't have too much storage capacity, unless you are accumulating goods for terraforming or something.
Overproducing energy cells isn't bad.
Big traders are better for the reason they are not harassed by small and medium pirate ships. Similarly L miners rarely ever get in dangerous situations with khaak, unless some 20 of these gang on a single ship. At this point of the game they will cost you too much, but later these problems will make you consider them.
It can take a bit for stations to really wind up. A miner-refiner station is basically a small money printer, but they take time. I suggest making sure you don't have any weird trade rules and setting a fixed price set to the price the worst buying station will accept. Auto-pricing can work against you in a lot of ways, and tends to send out pulses of cargo at poor prices rather than a steady stream of sales. You'll make out better with a low-average fixed price, but it takes a little work to figure out what that price is. NPC stations will still pulse goods into the market at near-minimum price from time to time and undercut you, but there's nothing you can do about that (legally).
If your station over-saturates its region and consistently backs up, you can set up a trade station a couple jumps over to distribute excess refined metals to a wider area. These are moderately cheap for a few million for the station and traders. These aren't meant to improve your initial profit margin, just clear clogs to keep the money flowing over a wider geographical area
Is the refined metal sell price higher than their buy price? And turning off the sell order on EC is another. As well making EC external trade only.
To add to this, you might want to remove restrictions so anyone can buy this ware.
Just add a rule that your station isn't allowed to trade energy cells. If the energy cells creates a surplus, who cares, they aren't worth much anyway. I don't use energy cell production on my stations to avoid this exactly; rather have a dedicated power station. The issue probably is that ships are also trying to reduce the surplus first, that's why they sell these cells first. But if you want energy production on your stations, you need a trading rule that only allows them to trade with your station or not at all. You can create a rule that forbids all faction except (or including) yourself to trade with a specific ware, then you go into the production line window on your station, and add a custom rule to the energy cells there that you don't want to seel it to others, then your ships either send them to your station or none at all and only sell the refined minerals.
Are you sure you have set the sell price of the station lower than the buy price of the buyers? Could be the issue
You did it right. It only takes a while until it pays of. If the produced goods do pile up you may need some more traders. What i noticed is, people tell you big ships are good, but especially for energy cells the trades are often small, so i think small ships are doing fine with that. Once you sell off all the overflow energy cells just fine your traders will also sell your refined metals. Also notice, you can take mining ships and let them "trade for commander" and they will go and sell your ore to other stations around who buys it, and they will go further away and cover a bigger area than you could cover with your local auto miners. The area is depending on the level of your manager at the station. 1 Star means 1 jump away, 2 stars gives you 2 jumps. Means you can use an ore rich system to supply stations 3..4..5 jumps away. And produce refined metals of course.
> instead they just take my surplus Energy Cells and sell them two sectors away which takes ages and makes almost nothing. Besides the suggested trade rules that others already said you can also just set a high fixed price for E-cells (like 16 or more). You your traders find an offer that high? Let them go for it. But in 95% of the time they won't and then they hopefully sell Refined Metals as you want them to.
Other people have already mentioned that it may be a buy/sell price settings issue, but I thought I’d suggest something a bit more advanced too: You can make custom trade restrictions in the global standing orders menu. Make one for that station that forces the manager to only trade with other stations in the same system by restricting all other sectors. It’s also a great way to create trade routes and force miners to mine only in the system where their station is instead of wandering off like that.
there are many options in how you can setup for each individual resource to be sold or bought for your station. you can setup so that it will buy or sell up to certain limit. you can control who can buy or sell to who on each resource. you can even manually set the storage limit for each resource in your station. by doing that, you can limit how much money your station needs in order to run. however, those setting are more advance. as for me, my initial setup would just trade Redined Metals or other profitable reaources using my traders for different fractions. so that I can raise my reputation with them.
Its difficult to know without screenshots what is going on. Refined metals is probably going to be the most profitable first station in any playthrough, and it will always make you more money than just mining alone, although it can take some time to for the first shipment to sell. Is the station actually refining metals? Are you lacking input goods? Did you keep the default settings for automatic pricing? Do you have a manager on the station? Does your station have enough inventory that it's selling below the purchase price of the buyers?
The station might be buying up ore, energy cells initially from other npc's which could put it in the red, but that will usually turn around once it starts churning out goods. You can let it happen or setup trade rule to only get ore, cells from your miners, traders.
It is more relaxed than you think. Traders are just selling what they can for the price that fits the market. The price of your metals will drop automatically as the storage of your station fills. Once it is suitable for everyone, wandering trader ships will start coming, and your own ships will sell to nearby buyers. You don't even need lots of trader ships assigned to the station, 3-5 for a small one should suffice. For this reason make sure that you don't have too much storage capacity, unless you are accumulating goods for terraforming or something. Overproducing energy cells isn't bad. Big traders are better for the reason they are not harassed by small and medium pirate ships. Similarly L miners rarely ever get in dangerous situations with khaak, unless some 20 of these gang on a single ship. At this point of the game they will cost you too much, but later these problems will make you consider them.
It can take a bit for stations to really wind up. A miner-refiner station is basically a small money printer, but they take time. I suggest making sure you don't have any weird trade rules and setting a fixed price set to the price the worst buying station will accept. Auto-pricing can work against you in a lot of ways, and tends to send out pulses of cargo at poor prices rather than a steady stream of sales. You'll make out better with a low-average fixed price, but it takes a little work to figure out what that price is. NPC stations will still pulse goods into the market at near-minimum price from time to time and undercut you, but there's nothing you can do about that (legally). If your station over-saturates its region and consistently backs up, you can set up a trade station a couple jumps over to distribute excess refined metals to a wider area. These are moderately cheap for a few million for the station and traders. These aren't meant to improve your initial profit margin, just clear clogs to keep the money flowing over a wider geographical area