How are systems generated in Known Stars games? The wiki says "The game works through all the stars in order of increasing distance. There is a 20% chance of selecting the nearest star, then if that isn't selected, 20% chance of second nearest star, etc." I think this is from the old VB version, but I haven't seen any posts about changes to this. I ran some tests in a fresh game generating systems from Sol and they seemed to confirm the 20% number. However, in my games I've also seen systems with really distant neighbors, like HIP 31293 in the screenshot. Its neighbors have distances in real space of 54.1, 63.1, and 70 light-years, and as far as I can tell there are hundreds of closer systems that haven't been picked yet. So it seems very unlikely to me that this was generated purely by iterating through the closest systems.

Sometimes you link to an existing system, but not one you know about. In that case, its a lot easier to end up with a system a long way away, because the number of systems in the sequence is much smaller. Or you are already in someone else's known system and they made the connection from their end. Or you just got the long-shot that sometimes happens.

Right now the only way I can think of a shipping line shrinking is through very old ships being retired while there are other ships idling (or getting their ships blown up). I know in the changelogs Steve sort of shoots down the idea of explicitly modelling operating costs, but maybe that would be a good way to have civilian shipping more closely model the economic activity of the empire. The admin overhead just reduces the growth rate as the shipping line gets bigger and doesn't really do the same thing.

Also I am once again asking for mineral transport contracts (esp being able to peg it to reserve levels).

These changes are so great they broke the forums for days with their sheer awesomeness.

First of all - all the changes look great!

At the topic of civilian shipping lines (hope I'm not late to the party), would it be possible to organise the civilian ships into some kind of convoys? Right now every ship is in its own fleet, which leads to tens if not hundreds of civilian fleets flying around.  This would declutter the map while still being able to see the CIVs on screen and could potentially limit the late game lag, since the civilian AI would calculate the decisions for lower number of fleets.

After a boarding action I have the transport shuttles load ground units from the captured ships, I suspect any troopship could load from the stationary ship

We never stop from learning with Aurora, thank you