I understand that, but for gameplay reasons player-created contracts should have an overriding priority above everything else.

Why?  They're civilians - they get to do what they want.  I could see putting up a suggestion that a player be allowed to up the bid price on the contract to make it more financially lucrative for them to take the government contract ($600 toilet seat, anyone?), but if they can make more profit on a local milk run, why go out of their way to take your contract?

John

Civilians first look for trips within the same system, then in adjacent systems, then two systems, etc.  They end up 'clustering' near the outer edges of your empire because your homeworld is only offering four-system trips, but your outer colonies have 'shorter' needs to be seen too.

In other words, there's a new life waiting for them on the Offworld Colonies!

The stuck part was "load trade goods at earth." 

The contracts were imbalanced.

I would assume normal behavior was "are there available contracts?  no?  trade normally" but it didn't seem to be the case.  They were still trying to load trade goods, but wouldn't move anywhere.

The Original Post described a problem with loitering ships, something I've had as well.  My civ fleet ground to a halt earlier, ticking me off.  Then I realized a candidate problem:

I had uneven supply\demand orders.  Earth was supplying 5 mass drivers.  Penumbra and Corundius were demanding 2 and 3 automated factories each.  Nothing happened, civs collected at earth.

I wiped out the uneven orders, and the whole fleet took off on their missions.

Perhaps this is in fact a bug worth bugging out about?

Yours sounds like it's worth logging a bug for.  In the original post, I think it depends on the orders.  If he clicks "Show Next Order" on the Display tab of the F3 screen and they show "Unload trade goods at X" but there's nothing actually on the ship, then I'm pretty sure it's a bug.  If it says "Load trade goods at X", then there's a good chance that it's WAI (Working As Intended) - there's just nothing to pick up at the location they're at, so they go looking for stuff at a different location (I think I remember this being part of the civie AI).  It's probably still ok to mention in the bugs thread to confirm WAI, he should just make sure to describe exactly what the orders look like.

If they're really ignoring contracts at the spot he mentioned (or within 4 jumps), then yes, it's probably a bug.

John

Moved to The Academy at request of original poster.

Use 5 day increments instead of 30 day ones, civ ships only get a new task at the end/beginning of increments.

...Hmmm, that might be the reason I got so little ships: I use 30 day increments all the time.

Use 5 day increments instead of 30 day ones, civ ships only get a new task at the end/beginning of increments.

...That's really quite a limiting factor, then.  My government owned freighters can run infrastructure to Mars almost an order of magnitude faster, then. Surely their routines could be moved to operating on sub-pulses without significant slowdown? I don't relish the idea of having to advance in one-day increments just to have a functioning civilian sector.