Trade Routes Not Appearing?

from Sins Forums
So I have about 7 planets (5 planets and 2 asteroids actually, all colonized), each has a trade port that's been up and running for several minutes, I can see the trade ships traversing between them, yet my trade route (the white lines that connect planets when the cursor hovers over the money display) is limited to only 4 planets.  Any reason why two planets/asteroids that are directly connected, both with functioning trade ports and without enemies, should *not* have a white line between them?
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Reply #1 from Sins Forums Top
That white line represents your longest chain of tradeports. The longer that chain, the bigger the multiplier on all the tradeport income in your empire.
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Reply #3 from Sins Forums Top
Except the white line doesn't seem to be working correctly. In the image below I have two trade ports that should be considered part of the chain, but for some reason aren't.



Even odder, if I build a trade port at the southern most planet (the ice one), then the white line extends properly in the south, but is removed from one of the planets in the north.
Reply #5 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, the longest route thing is totally bugged. Nothing you can do.
Reply #6 from Sins Forums Top
Uh, the two circled are 4 jumps away, whereas the chain is 6, counting the start and end. The two circled can go through the star. Therefore, it isn't the longest route.

It determines which trade port to which takes the longest.
Reply #7 from Sins Forums Top
Uh, the two circled are 4 jumps away, whereas the chain is 6, counting the start and end. The two circled can go through the star. Therefore, it isn't the longest route. It determines which trade port to which takes the longest.
End of quote


What he said. It finds the two farthest parts and then tries to draw the shortest 'chain' to connect them. Your two 'empty' ones are seperated by Space Junk and a Star, meaning the trade route goes through them, so they're effectively just neighbors. Therefore to draw the shortest, longest route, it must ignore those.

If you build one on the asteroid in the middle, it SHOULD route through there, and skip over the asteroid and ice planet, as it connects a shorter route.
Reply #8 from Sins Forums Top
I'm not sure I understand, still. Just as a test I added a trade port to the asteroid at the center of the map and the line changed like this:



Pretty much what you said above.. but I'm not sure I understand why it's going that way.
Reply #9 from Sins Forums Top
In the first image I'd expect the trade route to make a crescent shape which includes all available trade ports on that chain. I don't see why an extra jump should be an issue.

I do agree that choosing the longest trade route is bugged. I played Dopplegangers earlier today and instead of running a trade route from my home planet, to its star, to the star of a conquered system, and to the star of a conquered enemy planet, it simply ran the trade route from a volcanic planet sitting next to the star in both systems. I've also seen a couple other scenarios pop up like when the route switches from a longer chain to a smaller chain because it might wrap around itself. It's very strange.
Reply #10 from Sins Forums Top
Yeah, I just don't get it. Particularly in that last image, I can't see why the white line chose a particular route over another. While adding a trade port to the center asteroid raised my overall income because it is an extra trade port generating money, the increase was minimal because the amount of income each trade port was generating decreased (because the length of the chain shortened).