"Longest uninterrupted trade route" - not really the longest?

I can't check the manual now, but IIRC, the game is supposed to give a trade bonus along the longest uninterrupted trade route, which it will highlight if you cursor over your credit amount.

But what I'm seeing it show isn't nearly the longest route - it seems to cut bunches of planets out of the loop. In my current game, I have 12+ planets all with trade centers, and all connected, but at least 4-5 planets are left out that could have been put in the chain.

ie:
The letters are planets and the -'s and /'s are connections, ignore the .'s, which just keep the spacing correct:

....a-b
..././
w-x-y-z

The "longest" trade route I get shows w-x-y-z, with a and b ignored. But w-x-a-b-y-z does not revisit any planets and is a longer route both in terms of planet count and actual line distance traveled.

Am I missing something here? Is this a bug?

Also - is there any way to force my trade ships to stay within friendly space instead of taking shortcuts through enemy territory?

technical

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I think what the system is doing is finding the shortest routes between all your planets, it then uses the longest remaining one of them to calculate trade.

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I think what the system is doing is finding the shortest routes between all your planets, it then uses the longest remaining one of them to calculate trade.

Yes, but even then it tends to miss planets.

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(disclaimer : this is what I have found to be true, it could just be buggy or something)

Basically, It finds the shortest distance between the two of your planets that are farthest away from each other.

So in a
1-2-3
|Z|Z|
4-5-6
|Z|Z|
7-8-9

The Zs are empty space, but the spaces didn't save when I posted the post.

formation, if all 9 had trade routes, the route would probably be 1 to 2 to 3 to 6 to 9. I've found that it ignores planets without trade stations, even, so if only 1 and 9 had trade stations, the white line would still look the same, and you'd still get the +5 bonus, although, since you only have two actual stations, you'd get less money, but you could put four trade stations in 1 and five in 9, and you'd make the same amount of money as if you had a station in all 9 squares, because you'd have 9 stations, with the 5 star distance multiplier.

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