Angrypuffin

I tried the beta branch, and built four stations in an empty sector. I used the new configuration tab in the buy/sell menu to set the factories to actively request traders for both buying and selling. It seemed like each station would have exactly one ship in sector at a time. If it ran out of a product (even if it didn't literally have 0), a ship would come bringing 500 of the good, dock with the station, and charge me for the goods; and then the station would gain 500 of that good. It was smart enough that when one factory needed 15 Wires, and my station had 5 Wires, it still got more supplies from a ship; it didn't wait until the station had 0 wires (which would never happen). When the station had enough materials for production, ships would come and buy the products, even if there were only, say, 8 available for sale. One problem occurred when a ship for one of my stations bugged out. It was carrying Plastic, an ingredient for my High Capacity Lens station. It was near the station, but was not docked- I would guess it never docked, since my station never had plastic, and the ship always had it when I inspected it by flying close by. The ship also did not move. I ended up destroying the ship. The ship belonged to my allies, so this tanked my relationship with them to -100,000, which made playing miserable. But the station did start receiving more shiploads and functioning again. More importantly, it seemed to break the economy everywhere else in the galaxy. All factories I visited had 0 of all their products available for sale. I was effectively totally unable to buy any products. This was more of a downside than being able to practically get my own stations producing things was of an upside. There seemed to be a bug where if I deleted a block in build mode, it would only give me a partial refund, equal to the block repair cost; and it would display a warning notification for a damaged ship until I exited build mode. If I applied a template instead, it seemed to give me a full refund (but that's obviously less flexible). Ultimately, I opted back out of the beta, because all the other stations had 0 stock of their products, and that hurt the gameplay experience too much. But it definitely had the beginnings of a fun little system.