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Not sure if Trade routes are the right name, but that's what they appear to be. Those dotted lines going between my colonies.

Can I some how control where they go?

All of mine goes to and from my Capital, and that's it. It does not matter how far away a colony is or how many other are between it and the Capital.

I tried building a "trading" station between some of my planets. A station with a lot of Commerce Centers and Cargo space. But it's just sits there running out of fuel.

Current galaxy below.

That is an abstract trade route and the freighters go where they want to in the game.So it does not matter.

Well the freighters follow the "trade routes" for most part. Isn't there any way I can influence what route they take between my worlds?

That's strange. Commercial centers don't have to be built on planets, so I'd guess they should work in deep space too..
Maybe you're missing something else? I suspect you also need space yards on that base.

You need a spaceyard, it will connect to the rest of the network and shorten the route of nearby ships. Its smart to build one in each system

But does it need to be in a system?

The "Space Dock" is a space Yard. Small one true, but still.

The "Trade Station" doesn't have anything else then docks, cargo containers and commerce centers...

Edit: Just rembemberd the "ship classes" [:'(]
"Space Dock" is a "star base" by classification, but contains construction yards.

Does it need to be one of the three "Space Yard" (or whatever they are called) classifications to work[&:]

Well, seems that way. I only buying spaceports so they can help the first one building ships. At least, whereever i build them, systems connect to them instead of the capital if they are closer

Do commerce centers stack so far as bonus goes? I thought only the first one mattered. (For that matter, can you stack medical and recreational centers for additional effects?)
 
 
 

Well medical and recreational centers states the game states that it doesn't stack. It does not say anything one way or another about the commercail ones. So I guessestimated that it did stack

Well figured out how to make the "trade routes" go to someplace without a colony. It has to be a "Space Port" kind of base. So designed the smallest one to be 600 in size, and now I can build it where ever and freighters will use it. [8D]

BTW anyone know for sure whether Commercial centers stack or not?

They dont stack for sure.

I've used this method (building a small spaceport at a noncolony location) to facilitate easier asteroid mining. I built a small spaceport at an asteroid in the asteroid field and civilian miners FLOCKED to it. They would go out and mine an asteroid then come back and sell it at the base. It worked quite well I think.

What I'd like to do is build a small 'commerce port' that doesn't have building capabilities, but does have all the bonus things I need from the space ports. Problem is, the AI won't build those designs.

What I've run into is that even you modify the default base stations to streamline them, the AI will ignore it and build whatever it wants to anyway. Even deleting the designs doesn't help, it falls back to default. I'm going to work up a bug report on it this evening...once I mark a design obsolete and design something else to use in its place...I want the new design used.

Example: 4 types of research stations I condense into 1 research station design with 4 of each lab. AI will never build one, rather going back to the default stations. I even scrapped existing ones, deleted the default designs and the AI still builds the default designs.

This is getting quite annoying.

how does one even build space ports (not star bases) at non colony locations?

ORIGINAL: Shark7

This is getting quite annoying.

The annoying thing is not that the AI doesn't build them, because obviously, once you build a strange, esoteric combo-base, the AI would have no idea what it's for or when to use it, but that the AI persists in building things you have forbidden it from doing. If you delete a design and do not allow the AI to design things for you, the AI should not build it. Ever.

So anyone has any idea as to how does one make trade routes GO to a place? Star bases dont really work no matter what i put on them (shipyards w/ manufactering and/or commerce centers) and the only things that make dotted lines connect are Space Port types of structures, which need to be built on a colony.

why do you want trade routes to go anywhere but a colony? 

the picture at the very first post shows a good example of why i would want trade routes to go somewhere OTHER then a colony.

edit: on hindsight, i sort of figured how this trade route thingy works. Basically every colony can be linked to any other colony directly. When a certain route gets used often, the computer will designate a line to it and it becomes a trade route so if the guy with the picture in the first post played his game a little more, sooner or later all his fringe colonies will start linking to one another. The reason why they werent already linked is probably due to the fact that his colonies are new and volume of trade between them arent that great to start with (new colonies typically need resources and dont mine enough to give yet).

My question now is, what happens if my route is so long that my freighters run out of fuel halfway through while traversing a trade route?

ORIGINAL: forsaken1111

I've used this method (building a small spaceport at a noncolony location) to facilitate easier asteroid mining. I built a small spaceport at an asteroid in the asteroid field and civilian miners FLOCKED to it. They would go out and mine an asteroid then come back and sell it at the base. It worked quite well I think.

This is curious.

I would totally do this, if resource demands exploded.

There doesn't seem to be any reason to mine something without "rare" status, one source of everything seems to be enough. In case you can't tell, I'm of the opinion that resource demands need to skyrocket in this game.

actually the larger problem is how i cant tell what im lacking. For instance my ships arent coming out or my bases arent building. Why? I know theres 32 unbuilt components but which are those? What materials do i need to make them? Not knowing simply causes u to sit there staring, not being able to do a single thing about it. Not being able to do something about a problem due to external factors rather then your own incompetence is something that i find it hard to let pass...