The only thing increased speed does for freighters is to establish the trade route faster as far as I know.

Deth is correct. The amount a trade route is worth and the speed of the freighter moving along that route is fixed. When you increase the speed of a freighter all you are effecting is the speed at which it will go when setting the route up.

It is strange, since the mini freighters will actually look like your custom freighter, and even carry the weapons of your custom freighter, but what happened to the engines of your custom freighter?

They should change this for DA.

It wouldn't matter. The value of a trade route is calculated based on the distance that said freighter is from home at the time. The slower that a freighter travels, the longer the time at a distance, therefore, higher revenues. If that ship were a 'speed demon', then it would reach those distances more often, but would spend correspondingly less time there, and would gain less revenue as a result. I haven't crunched the numbers, (and have no desire to do so), but I would guess that these things would even out. BTW, in DA the value of a trade route rises with time, so act accordingly.

The slower that a freighter travels, the longer the time at a distance, therefore, higher revenues.

I think it all should balance out about equally. The real advantage of faster freighters would be that they are harder for the AI to kill.

Faster freight is safer freight but if there's a trade federation or you have galactic privateer, speed is irrelevant. With either of these, freight become targets the AI focuses on repeated in spite of its inability to destroy them.

Faster freight is safer freight but if there's a trade federation or you have galactic privateer, speed is irrelevant. With either of these, freight become targets the AI focuses on repeated in spite of its inability to destroy them.

Trade federation yes, Galactic privateer no.

The galactic privateer only protects your freighters from single ships, fleets still kill them.

That is exactly why i never bother building the galactic privateer, it is irrelevant.

They would also spend more time outside the influence area as well.

It is a toss-up, I think. They are going back and forth along the same route, and are in the effective zone of influence for a certain percentage of that time.

The percentage will not change with a change in speed.

If you think about it when your ships get experience in combat, it gets harder for them to get "hit". It's because their "hit points" increase but not in a sense that the hulls get upgraded but the pilots move better and avoid getting hit and last longer in combat, at least I think that's the idea behind it. Freighters on the other hand don't get experience and already have treaties and the galactic privateer as an advantage. The idea of a chance to evade will probably never happen in GalcivII since there is no tactical combat at present, maybe in future sequels.