Trade route question

You need the trading posts in each intermediate gravity well to get the trade route length bonus. Any gravity wells in between them that have logistics slot capability but DON'T have a trade station break the chain and you don't get the longest-path bonus.

Note that a "dead asteroid" counts as an interruption, and they can be a real pain in the ass to a trader economy. If your chain of planets looks like this: terran-asteroid-ice-volcanic-desert, your chain is five. But if it's like this: terran-deadasteroid-ice-volcanic-desert, your longest chain will only be three.

-- Retro

More info: the longest-chain gives an additional .1-credit income per chain-link per second for EACH trade station in your whole map. So if you only had two trade stations, your bonus is pretty small if they're next to each other (.1 x 2 = 0.2 bonus per second) than if they're not close. But if you had eight trade stations and your longest chain is three, that's (.3 x 8) = 2.4 bonus credits per second. If your longest chain is five, it's a bonus of 4.0 per second, or 1.6 more free credits per second. So, short story is it really does pay to build longer chains in mid- to late-game.

-- Retro

How does a trade agreement with another player affect trade income?

tec has research that adds 4 logs slots...inluding dead ast. so research it and then you can build a TP at a dead ast...thus preventing long chains being interupted by one

Here's a question I have about how the game calculates which of your routes is the longest. This happened to me in a game, I believe on the Centrifuge small map.

Please forgive my crude diagram. The I's and the dashes are phase lanes. The dots are just there to get the diagram to line up properly, just blank space.

A--------AF
I...............I
I...............I
I...............I
TP--------DP

I had a trade port constructed at the Asteroid at the top left of the diagram, the Terran Planet at the bottom left of the diagram, and the Desert Planet at the bottom right. All of these trade ports were trading with each other. However, the game decides that my longest trade route is from the Asteroid at the top left to the Desert Planet at the bottom right, but instead of going through the Terran Planet it goes through the unoccupied and uncontrollable Asteroid Field denying my my trade bonus on the Terran Planet. The distance from the planets looks to be equidistant, but the Terran Planet is completely ignored for the purposes of the chain. Why does it do this?

@cripple_x

Because it doesn't matter due to 2 reasons.

1. All trade post will benefit from the 'longest trade route bonus' regardless of the location of the trade post. The route doesnt have to go through you Terran Planet.

2. Obviously, with empires coming in all shapes and sizes, there can be more than one 'longest route' at any given time. The game will pick one (more or less randomly) just to show you where the route is. Ya, the route can also go through the TP but that's also 2 jumps. Recall that any uncolonizable gravity well also count as 1 jump for the route, the route shown by the game actually means if the Trade post at the TP is destroyed, you have a 'back up' route that goes throught the Astroid Field that is as long as the original one. You still loose that income from the destroyed one but you keep the bonus on the remaining stations.

Mmmmh... that informative.