Hello everyone, I seem to be having a weird issue when I attempt to setup manual trade routes. I am playing on the Steam version of P4 (latest version release was Dec 17, 2010).

I have eight counting houses and I'm trying to setup a single convoy to only pick up loads in seven these cities and use a single city as a drop-off point. I have set up the trades manually and I made sure they are ONLY to 'load' from the warehouse of the seven cities and 'unload' to the eighth. When I click 'activate' the convoy does not go to the starting city nor even the 2nd city in it's list. It goes to the third and it picked up goods from the starting city that I did NOT have listed in it's table.

The game has been great fun so far and I'm looking forward to playing the expansion.

Thank you.

(06-07-2011 11:22 PM)Dryton Wrote:  Hello everyone, I seem to be having a weird issue when I attempt to setup manual trade routes.

Just to be clear, I interpret "manual" to _you_ personally looking into the Market Halls and doing all of the buying and selling, and then sending the ship off to its next destination. "Autotrade" is when you "program" the buying and selling, Loading and Unloading, then start the ship on its circuit and essentially forget about it.

That said,....

1.) Start your "program" at the city where you drop off EVERYTHING.
2.) Unload "MAX" to the warehouse EVERY commodity. Unload occurs first, so now the ship is 100% empty.
3.) Load from the warehouse those specific commodities and in the quantities you desire. (Make sure that the amount to be Loaded does not exceed the capacity of the convoy.) You are now done with this city.
4.) Next city in the route. Unload to the warehouse the specific commodities in the quantities that you want to leave behind in this particular city.
5.) Load from the warehouse the specific commodities in the quantities that you want to take away from that city. Again, make sure that the capacity of the convoy is not exceeded. This town is now done.
6.) Repeat steps #4 and #5 for each town on the circuit, in order. When the last town in the circuit, the "program" is complete.

Since all of your exchanges are to and from the warehouses (as opposed to trading with the town) the "program" _should_ be as simple as it possibly could be. No concern at all about setting price limits.

If there is going to be a problem, it most likely has to do with trying to Load too much onto the convoy. (Overflow to the warehouse simply results with external storage in town, for which you pay a daily fee.) Attempting to do so may cause the AI to have a "brain freeze", but I think that what the AI will do is try to follow your orders by Unloading then Loading from the top to the bottom of the commodity list (Wood down to Spices). When the ship is full, the "program" jumps to "leave town" and the excess goods remain in the warehouse.

And don't be surprised if the convoy on autotrade lingers in port for several days. The captain Trade skill level determines how long he stays in each town, even if there is no trading going on (just goods transfer between ship and Counting House).

I swear sometimes i set up one of these auto trade routes
and go back to it later and the load and unload setings have changed