KI ???

anyway it's already known that if you give ships to an AI it doesn't always use them, moreso if they are far away from its territory/planets

only advice I can give is :

-if you give ships to an AI, move them closer to their planets/influence first

-don't know about rangers

I tried to get some extra trade in one game by gifting a frighters to an AI after all of my slots were filled. The ship was adjacent to one of my planets so it would seem obvious that they would have the route with me, a bit of a gamble i guess. However the ship never moved.

Other times I might try to get an AI to take out another's resource starbase by giving it a ship next to it while they are at war. Sometimes the just fly by it. Perhaps they look at the strength of the starbase.  Generally though i find the AI uses the ships i sell or give them. Mostly i lose track of them.

The freighter issue is fairly obvious- since it was made on one of your planets, that's the one the trade route would start from.  The AI probably can't figure out where the trade route would start from once you gifted it, so the ship wound up just sitting there, useless.

As for the resource starbase, that AI may have figured out that you were planning on swooping in to claim the resource the instant the base was taken out.  They'll usually not go after mining starbases at all unless they have some constructors ready to send to the available resource, so I'd park a few constructors with a ton of engines outside their sensor range.  That way, they think they can claim the resource, take out the starbase, and I can swoop in from the mists to plant my flag first.

As for the Terran Ranger at the top, they probably retrofitted it or disbanded it.  Lucky ships tend to be absolutely horrible from design standpoints, so I treat them like free upgrade-ready hulls.

Why build freighters (and for that matter, Miners too!) when you can have the AIs property for a few key techs?

Count 'hem up advantages & obstacles to such a trading strategy if you want;

- Asteroid mine fields give pp (even if far away from your colonies) to YOU instead of the enemy... they'd be flipping pop-ups regularly, but i can also decommission it as often as necessary while keeping THEIR Miners on that tile to rebuild on that resources.

- Same kind of principle for Freighters; keep an eye for newest AIs ships and grab the route away from them in a timely fashion. BCs are yours (and not theirs, i might insist) while you didn't have to build a single Freighter from your production points. Eventually, they will rebuild these routes, i know... but your own network would be up & running already.

It's all in the small (and somehow efficient) details, i believe.

Back to the op, it's a silly question.  The reason the AI doesn't use it's ships, is that it's not intelligent, nor programmed to utilize it's ships effectively.  It's a strong believer in cannon fodder...