Setting the Default “Internal Sale” Status
A new product set up for sale in your factory or farm is available to AI companies to buy. To keep it for your own use, enable Internal Sale on the product.
Making it the default
AI companies can start buying before you have had a chance to switch Internal Sale on — and once a purchase link exists it cannot simply be cancelled (see below). The way to avoid that is to make Internal Sale the default.
Open the Options menu (hotkey O) and set Default Internal Sale to Enabled.
Stopping an AI company that is already buying
Q. AI companies have been buying from my factory. My output can no longer meet demand and I want to stop them, but there seems to be no way to do it. Is there a solution?
A. Once a purchase link is established, the game’s rules let a company keep buying from that supplier. This protects the buyer from having an existing supply cut off abruptly.
The rule works both ways, which is the point of it. Imagine you are buying a raw material that is critical to production at your own factory. If any company could terminate a purchase link at will, you would spend the game repairing broken supply links — so the rule prevents that happening to anyone.
It can be done, but it is deliberately expensive. You must:
- Eliminate the sales unit they are buying from — destroying all its stock in the process.
- Set Internal Sale to On by default in the Options menu, as above.
- Set up a new sales unit to replace the one you removed. It takes the new default, so the link cannot form again.