Icons on the appropriate planets in the planet/ship summary list would be the best place to implement this idea. Scroll down the list till you find a planet that has a Hyperion Shrinker then double click to jump straight there, very nice.
That is the best strategy for using trade routes to make money. No, there is no diminishing return for just stacking a route between two planets. Trade has another advantage in that it can affect diplomatic relations. If you spread your trade routes around you can improve relations with your neighbors. In the later stages of "a regular" game where your tax economy is the primary income; trade routes are a nice income bonus but are worth more in being able to turn a friend into an ally.
The campaigns are stable and it was an oddity and would be unlikely to happen again. Keep going with the campaign and you will come to stuations where you absolutely dominate and the Drengin will surrender to the altarians just to spite you from playing your final death stroke. Finish the Dread lord campaign then get DA to keep the story going. Though I must admit the story does do a bit of an about face, in DL the story follows Terrans but for DA the story follows the Drengins. Hone
Taking a stab in the dark I'd say the Altarians did all the work. If they were very strong then that would have started off the chain reaction of surrenders that you saw. I cannot guess how or why they became so powerful, as in my campaigns they are a useless resource hogging pain. If you follow Kyro's suggestion and bump the difficulty up then the game will be a lot more dependent upon your actions. Just a side note when you tangle with the dread lords I find cargo hulls with only gu
Rough explanation of Market Center: In your Domestic screen you set your tax rate, lets say it is 50% for example. This tax rate is then applied to the population of each planet individually. A planet with 1 billion people and a 50% tax rate will earn you ~50 bc but a planet with 10 billion people and a tax rate of 50% will earn ~500 bc (Note these numbers are wrong, the actual formula is fairly complicated https://www.galciv.wikia.com/wiki/Tax, this is just a simple example). <br
I think he is referring to a little quirk I have also noticed... Sometimes there is a delay when the computer calculates spending and building, This is because when you are building no structures then social credits are diverted either to military spending or back into your treasury. This means that you have 0 being spent on social projects (you are not building anything so why would you be charged). But when you start a new building the computer calculates the build time based on that
