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When a trade agreement is signed how do freighters treat foreign empires stations? From playing they seem to only collect goods if your empire is in dire need of them even if you have a free trade agreement and therefore no tarrif drawbacks.

For example I had a game were I was low on polymer. I had one polymer mine far to the east of my empire. I saw a mortalen empire that neighbours me had alot of polymer mines. The diplo screen listed it as a resource they could supply me with. I went all out on the charm offensive and eventually signed a free trade agreement. My freighters still travel halfway across the galaxy to my mine to get tiny amounts of polymer instead of afew systems away to trade with the mortelans. Running the game on perhaps 1 - 2 freighters went to them for trade. Seems to make trade agreements pointless.

On a side note I signed a immigration treaty and had a steady stream of transports moving citizens between our worlds. Just seems the logic on movement of goods is odd.

Hey thanks for the report!

Do you mind posting your save here? The private economy AI is a complicated beast and there could be many factors at play. A save will help with figuring out what's going on.

Hi

Apologise I moved on from that game and deleted the save. I will remember in future to keep my saves if I decide to write on the forums.

I did however test how the freighters work with the game editor. I started a game with a free trade agreement with another empire then edited it so they had mining stations all over my home system so my freighters would have no choice but to get goods from them. Unfortunately the majority of freighters sat idle. They definitely did not act as if the foreign empires mines were like my own despite the free trade agreement. When I built ships and ran out of silicon one freighter was dispatched to the foreign silicon mine but even then only picked up 200 silicon when it could have picked a full load of 800.

I built afew mines of my own thinking maybe my lack of mines had something to do with it. Again most freighters sat idle the only ones moving shuttling resources from my only mines when I was in dire need of other materials readily available from the foreign stations. The only change was acouple of freighters started shuttling Caslon in large quantities from a foreign mine.

I have no idea about programming so don't know what is going on. But it seems to me a trade agreement especially a free trade agreement with no tarrifs should mean your empire... Well freely trades with the other. If it has material you need readily available and close by your freighter should be going there. Also I've checked my files for integrity and they all seem fine according to steam atleast.

That's an interesting situation you setup. If you have a save that demonstrates your testing, feel free to post it here.

As I had deleted the previous one I set up another situation the same as I explained above. Same thing happened. I have a few saves explained below. However I don't know how to upload them. I tried attaching them to this post but it comes up with an invalid file error. I googled it and came to a forum post dated 2010 talking about using filezilla, I presume this was for the original distant worlds is it still the upload method? If not could you tell us how or point me in the direct of instructions so I can upload.

First save is just the initial set up.

Second is were I changed the ownership of one of the foreign polymer mines to the player empire. Despite inactive freighters previously as soon as I did this freighters rushed to pick up polymer at the newly player owned mine so it was clearly needed.

Third is a save were I observed a strange thing that I had in my previous test and forgot to mention. For some reason every now and then a freighter will pick up a very small amount of nekros stone and emeros crystal.

I hope this will help and can get this system working. As for me the trade in this game is one of the major draws.