Bases could be classified in different groups... I was thinking this could be done on a per-commod basis and added as an extra trade bay stat, allowing people to import/export for a larger number of bases (read: colonies and EE kits).

When giving slaves orders, it would be possible to do it based on groups of bases in a galaxy. Example: "Sell rations [Buyers]" would create dock and sell ration orders for all bases with the ration 'Buyer' attribute. Being able to set a "supplier" type base and have slaves resupply every X sell orders would be nice as well (if possible), but less important. Ideally I'd like to move away from slaves requiring orders at all, but this seems like a smaller (easier) change to implement and is pretty much just improved UI.

Whilst we're on the subject it'd be nice if deleting a slave order didn't sroll to the top of the list. It makes editing slave orders incredibly difficult. Fixing that and adding a shift+ click system like the inventory would be wonderful

Vote Here

i plan on overhauling the trade slave order system once i have a bit of time, to allow for slightly less convulted and more automated system while keeping the current "system" as a possibility.

But the system i had in mind essentially allowed you to set your tradeslave one of 2 way.

The current method (maybe with slight improvement like buy sell x commodities).

But more importantly, a more automated method, where you would simply tell the slave which commodities to look for, in which supply bases (including other galaxies) and where to dump them (if multiple he would split his cargo in the number of bases) and then the ai would just take care of filling its cargo evenly with all the commodity listed from the closest supply base containing them. The automated system would basically just automatically set orders for you, so restrictions of programming etc would still apply, but it would make it a lot easier for multiple bases traderoutes.


Now while i had this idea for quite a while, it still is a low priority ish thing.

Offcourse if it get upvoted on the suggestion list, it would increase the priority on my list (and obviously you have my votes ! )

Bump for posterity.

Also wanted to point out that Jey's idea is cool, but I think some people just won't like trusting an automated system with their trade orders. So long as it's fairly quick to implement better manual controls should take priority ('cuz everyone wants that!).

Bump!

I was thinking recently that even just being able to shift+ click would be a huge improvement. Say, I can shift+drag to create multiple dock orders at once, then select those dock orders and create a sell order for each of them.

Omg yes

You'd probably want Ctrl-click as well (not all dock orders may be contiguous).

Come to think of it, when you select the Dock button you should also be able to ctrl-click and issue multiple Dock commands from the "select station" dialog.

Along with your suggestion, this would make setting up a standard industry slave take just four user actions:

Dock (select all extraction bases)
Select those in orders => Buy commod
Dock Prod
Sell commod