I can second the trade irregularities.
Normal behavior: Earth produces 100 factories. Shipping them anywhere is trivial-- the fleet disperses the stuff quickly.
Lets change the example.
Bad behavior: Asteroid 1 has 100 mines and a mass driver. Order up source for those, and set destination to another asteroid.
Nothing ever happens. The asteroid has no population, so ships never go there, and pick up the order.
I've seen such off-the-beaten-path orders filled in the past-- but only sporadically. Meanwhile, hundreds of cargo vessels have sat at sol or another major planetary hub, awaiting orders, for years. They aren't inactive, they just aren't getting tagged to do anything. Aside from the (what i believe) to be a bug that lowers the priority of minor world shipping orders.
Perhaps shipping orders need to be more valuable to the civilian fleet.