8 was my major choke point and i had 3 frig facs for fleet replacement and build. I ended up losing 9 cause I attacked at one point and didnt really build a sb there.Whenever they attacked my empire 6 got leveled(they came from the roid). Yeah i see your point tho. Their center guy was the one i mbx2. He eventually built a flak fleet of about 80. Then when i got to him he had 30 kodis.It was a major build game for me I never really lost any battles but I ended up with about 50 lf which is most I ever had I think. If I would have built novs early the game would have been over much sooner. They said it was reason they quit.

Yes I know #8 had a frigate factory. But you could have gotten trade port on your starbase.  Hell you could have gottenf rigate factory on the starbase also. 

And the way the game calculates longest trade route is such that it counts the longest path between any 2 of your tradeports, usign the shortest routes.  If you can get from A to B by going through C, it won't count a route thats A,D,F,G,H,B.  It will only count A,C,B.

Replay Added btw