How do I form trade route for my freighters?

You can only form trade routes with the AIs. Just set the planet of your choice as the freighter's target (right click as you would moving anywhere else), and it will establish a route between that planet and the one it was built on.

Select the ship by clicking on it. Then, tell it to move to a space occupied by a planet (right click on the planet to do this).

Edit: Looks like Kryo beat me to it.

Is it possible to build a freighter on one planet but have it form a trade route between an AI planet and a planet under my control but not the one that it was built on?

Thanks.

no

OmegaTomato, I believe that you can. I have never actually done so, but I am reasonably certain that if you send a freighter to one of your other worlds, you can relaunch that freighter and send it to an AI planet and it will form a trade route between the two.

I tried that once, Mistralok, and as I recall, it didn't work -- the source of the trade route was still the planet that manufactured the freighter.

Thanks, AA. Now my curiosity is up. I'll try to do this in my current game just to see what happens.

Well, by golly, guys, you were right and I was wrong. I built a couple of freighters, sent them to orbit around other worlds for a couple of turns, then sent them off to start a trade route. The routes were both attributed to the planet on which they were built. It seems that a freighter is 'tagged' with the planet that they are produced on. I assumed (incorrectly), that that tag would be added when they left their last port of call. So- if a planet cannot manufacture a freighter, it cannot trade. Next time I'll try something out before talking out of...the side of my mouth.

When I right click on a planet with my freighter selected, I'm asked if I want to attack the planet and start a war. Not what I had in mind. What should I do to establish a trade route?

Is it a custom designed freighter, or the core ship that comes with the game?

If it is custom designed, you may not have put a freight module on it.

Also, you might have accidentally built a transport instead of a freighter.

I should probably mention...

If you are using Kryo's Hull System Mod, you may have inadvertently put the freighter module on as a piece of jewelry instead of using the correct module from the Modules/Capacity tab.

I think it was a custom design because I added some weapons to it. Back to the drawing board.

A related question - can I set up multiple trade routes between the same two planets? Is there any benefit or drawback to this?

I don't believe you can, but I've never tried.

Yep you can set up multiple trade routes between the same planets.

And the benefit to that is that you can equip Economic Starbases with trade modules, and the trade bonuses will apply to all the trade routes on that path.