I have some... strange civilian issues.
Here is a map of the region :
Sol, Barnards, Wolf 1061 and 70 Ophiuchi are the only populated systems.
There's only one NPR with trade access, 5 jumps away from Sol & Barnard (down the Lalande/Luyten 674-15/YZ Canis Min. chain) so it's probably not relevant
* On a Sol-Wolf 1061 run, a lot (maybe all?) of the civilians takes the "scenic" route of Sol -> Barnards -> Lalande -> 61 Cygni -> Barnards (AGAIN!) -> Wolf 1061.
* On an internal Sol run (6 habitable planets on the same system makes for a lot of trade opportunities), Civilians takes the Sol -> Luyten 726-8 -> Lacaille -> Sirius -> Sol route...
Now, It's not like i'm against sightseeing, but the shipping lines should fire those ship captains for wasting company ressources. Unless they're paid by travelled miles instead of the true trip distance, like some unscrupulous taxi drivers...
I suppose there's somewhere in the source code a part supposed to prioritize long distance hauls, but don't works as expected... The algorithm seems to be on the lines of :
- Look at all trade opportunities
- Compute the *longest* route for each trade deal
- Choose the deal with the longuest route.
- Use the computed route
While the second step should always be "compute the *shortest* route"
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Again about civilians : my propulsion expert discovered Magneto-plasma drives 4 years ago, a new shipping line happily build L4, C4 and F4, but the 3 olders lines still build older Ion-propelled ships, even after I made those designs obsolete manually...