Commodity Logistics Software MK2 or CLS2, is a script made by Lucike, a german modder/scripter who have made several excellent scripts to enhance the gameplay of the X-Universe.

It is part of the Bonus package for X3TC/AP and thus needs to be downloaded from the Egosoft homepage and installed in your default X3TC/AP folder.

Download link: http://www.egosoft.com/download/x3tc/bonus_en.php?list=107
Script thread: http://forum.egosoft.com/viewtopic.php?t=275928

In game, CLS2 is a software that allows you to setup a repeatable sequence of orders within in a set of parameters on your ships. After you set up orders and started it on one of your ships, it runs continously until you give the ship new orders.

An example:
Fly to station A -> load 500 bofu at station A -> Fly to station B-> Unload 500 bofu at station B

Once the ship have finished unloading at station B, it will fly back to station A and repeat the sequence indefinitely.

You can only buy it at:
- Argon Equipment Docks
- Paranid Communications Facility in Priest's Pity

You will need to have neutral relation with either race to be able to buy it.

The cost is 10 752 Credits.

A ship from one of these classes:
- Fighters (M3, M4, M5)
- Bombers (M8)
- Corvettes (M6)
- Military Transport (TM)
- Transport (TS)
- Personell Tranport (TP)
- Large Transport (TL)

Software, required to start CLS2:
- Navigation Command Software MK1
- Commodity Logistics Software MK2

Optional software, not required to start CLS2
- Fight Command MK1
- Fight Command MK2
- Transporter Device (Needed if the CLS2 ship is set up to transfer wares when undocked/in space)
- Jumpdrive (Cuts down travel time if over several sectors)

Important:

For CLS2 to work, your ship MUST be docked in a station, npc or playerowned to spawn a pilot to run the script.

The Start external Commodity Logistics button will be greyed out until you do that. Once you have a pilot in the ship, it's no longer required to be at a station to start CLS2 and the main menu becomes availible even when he's flying.

Note: If you are only interested in how to navigate the CLS2 menu and set up CLS2, skip the first 2 tutorial sections.

I have made a tutorial based on the Humble Merchant start.

This is a step by step guide how to fast get a CLS2 trader up and running. It's divided up in sections to avoid information overload. It's a lot of information and I have tried explaning it as understandable as possible.

CLS2 requires you to think in the beginning, but it's akin to cycling. Once you know it, it's automatic

This tutorial will show you the tip of the iceberg.

The humble merchant starts you off with the following:

- 1 Discoverer (M5)
- 1 Mercury (TS)
- 10 000 Credits

First, I need to liquidize my hard assets. 10 000 Credits is not enough to setup the TS to become a CLS2 trader nor do decent trading in bulk.

So the first thing I do is to fly in my Discoverer to the South gate (Argon Prime) with the Mercury following me.

I dock my Discoverer and Mercury in the Equipment dock and sell the ships shields.
I transfer all software that isn't on the Mercury over from the Discoverer and send my Discoverer to be sold in the shipyard.

I now have funds. I maxtune the engine and rudders on the Mercury. I do not do add a credit to the cargo hold because funds are limited. I buy all the relevant software for a CLS2 ship and player-relevant software.



I do not have the cash for another ship. So for this TS to be an CLS2 trader, I must do some trading by myself to get more funds.

Note: The duration of you doing the trading is up your keen sense on knowing where the profits are + how fast and often you beat the npctraders to the deal.

I begin to check the stations in Argon Prime, and find that one factory needs meatsteaks cahoona and they will pay a very good for it.

I remember the Cahoona bakery and go straight there. Buy a full cargohold, go back to the factory and sell with profits. I do this at every profit opportunity I find accumulating credits while going south to Home of Light.

There I buy a Jumpdrive, I then go to Ore Belt who has a Solar Power Plant and buy 1000 E-cells and jump around trading with even better profits.

Eventually I have enough money to buy a fully tuned Discoverer again. I jump into the Discoverer. Voila! So much more class than a rusty bulkhead.

I dock the trader into the nearest station and will now set up his route.

Note: The text under the picture describes what's I'm doing.



Open up the command console on the ship you have designated as a CLS2 trader. It must be docked to a station IF you do not have a CLS1/CLS2/CAG pilot in it from before.
Select trade
Select Start External commodity logistics
Here you have the CLS2 Menu in all its glory. It might be a bit overwhelming at first, but you will become accustomed to it quickly.
Select Waypoints. This is where you input the orders that you want your ship to perform.
As you can see, it's empty. Click add a station/ship, to make your first waypoint. For now, we'll add a station.
By clicking add station, we have opened up a universe map. It navigates the same way as the regular universe map. Find the sector where the first waypoints station are. I chose Ore Belt.
Now we have the map of the sector you chose, in this case Ore Belt. From previous scouting, I know that the ore mines are largely depleted of energy cells and the solar power plant is full. So I chose solar power plant as my first waypoint.
This brings up a menu that lists the orders you can perform there. I am interesting in having the solar power plant as a starting point for every loop of the orderqueue, so I choose Fly to station as my first waypoint.
Voila! Our first waypoint. Select the fly to station.
Here you can add more orders to be performed at the same station. You do this by clicking Add waypoint.
Click Buy, because we need to buy from an NPC station.
Here you get the availible wares at the station. In this case, there is only energy cells. Click on it.
Now you will get the question at what price do you want to buy energy cells at. I choose minimum product price, which is 12. If you want to set another price which is between the min,avg, max prices, use manual price setting. You will then get a box up where you fill in the price you want to buy at.
After setting the price, you will be asked how many units you want to buy. For now I'll go maximum cargohold. The other settings are like this:
Manual setting: It will buy X amount each time the price is right
Manual setting up to: It will buy up to X amount each time the price is right. If the amount is reached, it will not buy more even if the price is right.
Maximum cargospace: Same as manual setting, but X amount is now the number of cargounits on your ship.
Half cargospace works the same as mentioned over. I never use it since the three first is all you need.
Voila! The first waypoint is now complete.
Now I will add another station.
I want it to be working in the same sector where it buys the energy cells.
I chose one of the three ore mines
Now I want to sell energy cells to the ore mines. I repeat this three times on each of em.
Here are the finished list. Note that the add station/ship selection is now gone. This is because our pilot is an apprentice and cannot have more than 4 waypoints to begin with. This will increase as referred to before.
Go back to the main CLS2 menu and click Start external Commodity Logistics
And there we go, our CLS2 pilot now starts on his first waypoint which is to fly to the solar power plant.
A quick look at the trader settings to see how he's doing. His profits and wages are logged here. Trader settings is the top selection in the main CLS2 menu.
And there he's off on his first delivery. Makes me all moist in my eyes ;)

This concludes the lecture on how to setup a basic CLS2 trader.

The pilots will take training courses as they accumulate flight time and level up.

The time for the pilot to level up is 2 hours per level but the flight time to become a logistician is the same. So if you hire a cargo messenger, it will fly the same amount of hours as an apprentice before he's a logistician.

"Abilities" that applies to the lower levels, applies to the higher. A logisitican can do all the things mentioned and so on downwards.

Apprentice (default)
- Able to use up to 4 waypoints in total.
- Cannot deliver to equipment docks or trading stations
- He requires no wages

Courier
- Able to use up to 6 waypoints in total in the tour.
- Can deliver commodities to equipment docks and trading stations.
- 20 Credits per Mizura flown, payed after each loop.

Supplier
- Able to use up to 10 waypoints in total in the tour.
- Will upgrade speed if it's availible in his sector
- Wil buy fighter drones for defence if he has fight command installed.
- Can use a transporter device
- 25 Credits per Mizura flown, payed after each loop.

Cargo Messenger
- Able to use up to 15 waypoints in total in the tour.
- Able to use the jumpdrive
- 30 Credits per Mizura flown, payed after each loop.

Forwarding Agent
- Able to use up to 20 waypoints in total in the tour.
- Will not enter sectors where enemies are present
- 35 Credits per Mizura flown, payed after each loop.

Logistician
- No restrictions on amount of waypoints
- Repairs ship at shipyard if damaged
- 40 Credits per Mizura flown, payed after each loop.

I have shown you how to setup a CLS2 trader with waypoints. But this software have so much more hidden in the other menus that I feel needs proper explanation.

We will start by opening the CLS2 main menu again.

As you can see, there are 7 more submenus I did not talk about in the previous section. I will now try to explain them indepth section wise.

Note: The text under the picture is the pictures description.

Delete accounting information
This option allows you to delete your pilot's accounting information. It's permanent and requires an extra confirmation.

Take trainings
Here you specify if you want your pilot to level up or not.

Trader salary
Specify from which account you want the pilot to be payed from. The homebase or your pockets.

Fire trader
If you want, you can fire the trader. Dock at a station to be able to fire him. It's permanent and requires an extra confirmation.

Reassign trader
You can transfer your pilot to a new ship by using this option. Both ships needs to be docked. The pilot's CLS2 waypoints and setup will carry over.

Restore defaults
This command resets these settings to their default values.

Note: The text under the picture is pictures description.

This is a very neat feature that allows you to make multiple waypoints by doing it once.
Click it and you'll get the universe map as we know from when you make a single waypoint. In this example, I selected power circle. I had already setup a waypoint to buy at a solar powerplant, now I needed buyers.
Now you'll need to input how many jumps from selected sector that you want to it to find possible buyers. I entered 0, meaning it will only search within the sector.
It will now give you a full list of all the wares in the universe, I want to sell energy cells so I select that one.
Now it wants to know what you want to do, in this case I want to sell.
Now you are asked about selling price, in this case I want to sell it at average price.
Now you are asked about how much you want to sell, I want to sell every e-cell in the cargohold of the CLS2 ship.
Voila! I got three waypoints generated by doing the job once. The solar power plant was already there.

Once your pilot becomes a Logistician, the script creator says it has no limits on waypoints. (Well, it has. 255, I think?) So use this feature wisely. Doing this to set it up to sell energycells universewide (50 jumps) will give you:

a) a very very long list
b) gray hairs

A lot of headache can come from not understanding the supply conditions that the CLS2 pilot operates from. I'll explain it here.


]Minimum delivery amount for collecting
The pilot will only fly to a waypoint if he can at least collect 5% of the wanted amount. Click to get an input box and change it.

Minimum delivery amount for delivering
The pilot will only fly to a waypoint if he can at least deliver 5% of the wanted amount. Click to get an input box and change it.

Dock with ship only in the same sector
This means that the ship will go to another ship that has docking ports (TM/M7/TL/M1 and some honorable exceptions) and perform whatever you want him to do on that ship IF the ship is in the same sector. If it jumps out before he gets to dock, he will stop.

Wait for request signal
Once you install the bonus pack, you will find that in controls there are new keybindings. Request signal is one of them. What this does is that once you press that button, the CLS2 will do his job one loop. After that, he goes back into hibernation. One of the features I've most rarely used.

Quit working in homebase
Select this to do a controlled shutdown of the CLS2 trader to avoid any troubles with running jobs in the background. The trader will finish his loop, dock at his homebase and terminate the queue.

Restore defaults
This command resets these settings to their default values.

Note: The text under the picture is the description

The CLS2 script needs to have its jumpdrive set up within this menu. It's pretty straightforward.

Use jumpdrive
Yes, the pilot will use the jumpdrive if it's installed on the ship.
No, the pilot will not use the jumpdrive even if it's installed on the ship.
By default this is set to No.

Jump Drive settings
Here you input the amount energy cells you want the ship to store as jumpdrive fuel.

]Minimum jump range
The amount of jumps your pilot will have as a minimum limit to decide if he will fly or jump to sector.
0 means 0 jumps distance, thus if waypoints require 1 jump he will jump.

Restore Defaults
Resets the values back to default values.

Note: The text under the picture is the pictures description.


Promotions
Your pilot will inform you when he have completed a training course/levelled up. You will get a message in your game log. Default is yes, change it to no if you do not want to be updated.

Enemy sightings
Your pilot will inform you when he encounters enemies or know about enemies in the sector he is in. You will get a message in your game log. Default is yes, change it to no if you do not want to be updated.

Acoustic signals at messages
Messages sent from your pilot, will now alert you with a ping.

Trade log
The pilot can write every transaction into your business log. If set to on, it will write to log1504.txt which is located in your savegame folder

Analysis to log
The pilot copies all his data to an external text file called log1000.txt which is located in your savegame folder. Very useful when you are trying to find out why the pilot is not doing anything at all.

Note: The text under the picture is the pictures description.

Now I'll talk about a very handy submenu, the Data Storage. Here you can load and save the entire setup from the various submenus of an existing CLS2 pilot.

I want to save the CLS2 pilot setup from the tutorial, so that in the future I do not need to setup the next pilot. I click save.
Here I see that I have ample space for several different saves, trust me that these will fill up once you expand. I click the first one where I get an input box where I name the save.
And now the setup is saved. The next CLS2 pilot can be setup entirely by just loading this save. It will be an exact copy of the previous one.

Here are some tips for you from an old fox

- Dock your ship at the trading station in Herrons Nebula and open the CLS2 main menu there. The script creator have made it so that there's a chance that you will hire experienced pilots from that station. Hire and fire until you have a pilot with the level you want.

- Use the save/load data and log feature. They will save you from a lot of grief. Trust me.

- Remember, if it doesnt fly, 99% of the time it's your fault. Find the error and fix it.

Well, the CLS2 guide is done. This guide started somewhat skinny and ended up being the monster you have now hopefully read through, I hope that this guide was helpful and please do give me feedback if you feel that I have left something out.

I want to thank you for reading it, the script creator, the one who wanted me to make this, Egosoft and of course, coffee.