Faster engines are a waste except as you say to establish the route quicker. It is never that critical for me to add the cost of engines.

Before I learned that all established routes are at the same speed, I was building all kinds of lightning fast freighters thinking they would increase my trade income

yeh. freighters are slow....

btw, i just began wondering, does adding more trade modules increase the value of the route?!?!?!

More engines lets you establish the route faster but then it moves only one "square" per turn. So you must consider a balance. You receive income each turn though.

Quote: "almost positive you cant add more then 1 trade module, just like construction moduels." :This is correct.

-Wade

plus in the long run the longer it takes the freighter to get from one planet to the other = more money, thats why the further away it gose the more money it brings in, so if it did go faster then 1 square you'd actually be losing money

Exactly!

"You receive income each turn though."

-Wade

For a ship with speed Fast to be better than a ship with speed Slow we need (Distance/Slow - Distance/Fast)*Value - EngineCost > 0. Value is actually the average value of the route over the most distant (Distance/Slow - Distance/Fast) squares but can be estimated as the average value over the entire route (generally an underestimate). We actually need the result to be reasonably large positive number as "interest" to overcome the fact that money now is better than money in the future.
A little tinkering should convince you that fast freighters are a good idea for trade routes of significant length once you have decent engines and assuming you are building and not buying the freighter (as that affects EngineCost drastically).
e.g. (78/4-78/2)*12-EngineCost = 228 - EngineCost >> 0 (I made up the 12, as it depends on population.)
If I knew the exact formula for the average value of a trade route, I could do a better analysis, but it will still amount to "Faster freighters are better."

When I first learned about the strategic map, I was surprised to see that the computer had ?set waypoints? and routed his trade routes WAY longer than the most direct route. I mean, he had them looped to the far corners of the galaxy.

Has anybody ever done this? It would seem to make sense... you make more money the further out the trade frigate is, so if you set some waypoints you might get a lot more income by making the frigates stay further out for longer periods.

This was a couple of revisions ago, so maybe it was just a bug.

Engines are pretty cheap in general, and once you get really high up there, they get really cheap at the hyperwarps.
Your relations with the receiving AI improve sooner and you start making money sooner, so it's worth it for me.

As for the AI taking a long path around, I think it's just a flaw with them. Sometimes they can't seem to decide where to land a freighter, or maybe they are maxed on trade routes. I've seen freighters pass by back and forth then eventually land on a planet, but the established trade route was just that of an auto-pilot path. As far as I can tell, there is no benefit from that, but I haven't tried it, no.

You can build huge-hulled freighters that are armed to the teeth with the latest weapons and defenses money can buy, however this isn't very cost-effective.

What I suggest is to research Master Trade and then build the Galactic Privateer wonder. This makes you trade ships 95% invulnerable and confuses the AI to no end. (It’s funny to see a fleet of ships chasing my freighters all across the map, stupidly attacking without success. )

plus in the long run the longer it takes the freighter to get from one planet to the other = more money, thats why the further away it gose the more money it brings in, so if it did go faster then 1 square you'd actually be losing money

this is wrong. It's not HOW LONG it takes, it's the DISTANCE. Speed is irrelevent, since once a route is established, the frieghter travels at 1pc.
What everyone else is talking about is the initial trip BEFORE the route is established. I say it's worth it. The sooner a route is established the sooner the money comes in.
I put engines and life support so I get corner to corner diagonal routes going on a gigantic map, early inthe game. Big money.

The manual and most of you on here are saying the trade routes are more valuable the further away they are. Is that definitely true? Cos I've never noticed any difference whatsoever between sending a freighter to the nearest alien planet and sending one halfway across the galaxy. At least as far as the "x bc per month" message you get when the route is first established.

You can build huge-hulled freighters that are armed to the teeth with the latest weapons and defenses money can buy, however this isn't very cost-effective.

ohh i dont know, if your freighters are kicking the snot out of the enemy fleets, and since the enemy seems to live to attack shipping id say its worth the cost. but thats just a quirk in my outlook on life

as to the distance argument, since the income is based on distance, it would seem to me that the further away a ship is the more money it makes, HOWEVER if a ship were faster it would spend less time further away, on the other hand it would also spend less time closer as well, you would have to figure out the exact distance of the rout and how many turns it would take to cover that rout at a given speed to decide how much more or less BCs you would make.

for instiance, say your trade rout was 40 squares, and your ship moved exactly 40 squares per turn, then you would allways start from square one in orbit around your homeworld, and allways finish the rout there in one turn , so you would never actualy move from that spot to change income calculations since at the start of every turn your ship would be in the exact same square as the start of your last turn. it wouldnt spend any time between turns in any other square but the starting one thus your income calculations would never reflect any distance from the starting planet since the whole rout was coverd in one turn. you would allways get the minimum cash because you would allways start and end a single turn in the same spot

as for

Cos I've never noticed any difference whatsoever between sending a freighter to the nearest alien planet and sending one halfway across the galaxy. At least as far as the "x bc per month" message you get when the route is first established.

the cash notification i think is based on planets population that you connect, i usualy get 5 per turn message but later on in the game when there are 13-15 or more billion people it can go up to 7 or 8 per turn. but when i check the income in the trade screen on turn by turn basis it allways changes each turn raising and lowering depending where in the rout the freighter is at the time.

again i think that the notification is just giving you the base income, and it rises from there depending on the distance the freighter is from the starting planet. i dont KNOW that for certian but call it an educated guess. since i have noticed changes in income based on all these things. ive seen routs that only started at 5 BC per turn giving as much as 25+ in the trade screen.