Dotted lines?

[MasterChief]

What do the dotted lines between your colonized systems mean? I scanned through the manual, galactopedia and forum posts but didn't find the answer.

[Bleek]

I assumed they were supply lines?

[Bingeling]

Main trade lines. I am not sure they actually mean much, though. You can see them shift sometimes, so I guess there is some calculation behind them.

The best thing about them is that it makes it easy to spot locations where there must be a space port.

[MasterChief]

Hey Bingeling,

They do seem to aid me in quickly visualizing the "boundaries" of my empire. Odd, that they go through the trouble of coding this feature into the game but provide very little info on the purpose or how best to exploit this visual resource.

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

Main trade lines. I am not sure they actually mean much, though. You can see them shift sometimes, so I guess there is some calculation behind them.

The best thing about them is that it makes it easy to spot locations where there must be a space port.

[Bingeling]

It connects your empire. Without the lines it could be very hard to see where an empire is located. They are handy, but I don't find them very informative, apart from that you know there must be a spaceport in a system with more than one line.

It also tends to go from major colony to major colony, there is some kind of logic to it. If you build a colony on a rare resource site, expect it to get a direct line to your capital quite soon. Even if very far away.

[MasterChief]

There does appear to be some logic to it... that's what's bugging me. There is some reason for it, and maybe the only reason is a quick visual connect to your colonies, but then again it might be telling us more... we just don't know.

Regardless thanks to you and Bleek for replying

ORIGINAL: Bingeling

It connects your empire. Without the lines it could be very hard to see where an empire is located. They are handy, but I don't find them very informative, apart from that you know there must be a spaceport in a system with more than one line.

It also tends to go from major colony to major colony, there is some kind of logic to it. If you build a colony on a rare resource site, expect it to get a direct line to your capital quite soon. Even if very far away.

[adecoy95]

i beleve it just web graphs the systems together, it takes the nearest decently populated world and "spiders" the lines to nearby small settlement worlds.

[J HG T]

From what I've seen, read and understood the dotted lines resemble important trade routes between your planets. I'm not sure if it's determined by the amount of transports or the value of their cargo. May be the cargos value as super rare resources almost always link directly to your home planet.
Still, the dotted line seems to only appear when you have spaceports in connected systems.

[MasterChief]

I would assume then, as several of you have suggested, it has something to do with trade or supply routes. I am still interested in why the game chooses to connect spaceports as it does.

- Is it based on volume of traffic?

- Is it based on value of traffic?

- Does it imply preferred path of cargo ships?

… and/or does it suggest routes worth paying extra attention to when assigning patrol duties for warships?

As with the many questions of the universe, we may never know the real answer. [&:]

[Data]

We can make observations as to what is transported, how often and how much and so on. We could find this stuff up, eventually.
Since the lines never dissapear I don't think they are relative to anything else but spaceport connections and distance.

[LoBaron]

Hm, I did see the lines disappear though.

You can even force it. If you have 2 small spaceports and build a medium ord large one
in a system located between the them, the dotted line which connects the small ports disappears.
At least I think it worked that way.

[Bingeling]

Lines do disappear once in a while.

Every colony got a connection (as long as you got more than one).

Big colonies or big space ports (or both) tend to have priority on connections.

Say you play in a clustered galaxy, and dominate your home cluster. You place a colony in a neighbor cluster, and it gets connected to your closest colony. We say you build space ports in every systems... If you build more fresh colonies in the other system, one will be the hub, but I think it can be a different one than your first. The long connection back home is turned off.

If you in a war capture a wealthy planet next to your new ones (think enemy capital), expect this one to get a link directly to your capital after a while, and all the others puny colonies to be connected to this one instead. But for most parts, links are quite static.

I think some factors that decide whether a link is displayed is

- Volume of direct trade
- Distance
- Space port class
- Possibly colony size
- Capital bonus (maybe also regional?)
- And each colony must have a link somewhere

There is also probably some mechanism to make larger colonies request more goods, so they are also more likely to hand out goods.

From the swarm AAR, focus southern cluster.


Fresh colonies, no space port. All have link back to capital (or maybe capital is the one on the map edge).


A space port in the southern cluster. This one becomes the local boss, and have another link up north added. It makes sense if trade flows also from those other colonies.


Stupid AI messing up my map... Anyways, another colony down there has received its space port. Some local control is shifted, but also notice that none of the southern has kept that link up left. Just the initial link towards the capital is preserved.

Why did that second link north disappear? Mabye war messed up? I doubt so. I think was happened was that the south got better developed, and less trade flew between the clusters. Or total trade volume made it seem like less trade flow if the formula includes total empire trade volume in some way.

I am sure that if one log everything carefully, one could figure out a plausible model after just a few 100 proper games. The images in this post was helped by the AI running space port building (with some intervention if too stupid), and due to the AI not understanding the real cashflow it refuses to build space ports even if the empire is filthy rich, getting richer every year.

[Data]

You're right, guys, they do dissapear or rearrange...stupid of me to forget that, mea culpa.

[Bingeling]

Btw, if you look at the purple guys middle and left in the first and second image, there is quite some interesting routes going on. I dismantled that funny situation without paying it any attention, though.

[WoodMan]

Erik confirmed this sometime in the past, they are a visual guide only and have nothing to do with the amount of traffic moving along them nor do they give any bonus to trade moving along them.  They are simply there to give your Empire some coherence on the screen. 

A colony will have a line to its nearest neighbour, a spaceport will have lines to all neighbours.

Due to the above you will see them often used as busy trade routes, as they draw the shortest routes between two systems, however ships won't always follow them, for example if a ship is flying from one system to another that is not its closest neighbour then the shortest route might not be to directly follow the line.

[Merker]

Actually, from what I figured out, the dotted lines are main trade and traffic routes. They represent the direction of resource flow. So if a new colony is connected to a bigger colony nexus, they receive their resources only from there, nowhere else. Freighters travel only along that trade route when moving resources between colonies. I think trade nexuses receive resources meant for the other colonies in their region that are subordinates then some freighters pick up those resources and move them to their destinations(probably that's what "reserved" means) . Freighters do not follow the trade routes when moving resources from mining bases and other stations, so the dotted lines only connect colonies.

It also depends on space port class. A small spaceport overrules all no-spaceport colonies that are closest to it(if a medium spaceport is nearer to the colonies or a small spaceport that is closer to the capital then the colonies switch to it) and is overruled by a medium one and that one by a large SP. I think traffic and colony size defines the spaceport rank when spaceports of the same class are present. I did notice spaceports at large colonies instantly receive trade routes when built, even though they were small. So colony size does have a major impact on traffic, since trade routes automatically form towards systems with big colonies and no spaceports. I don't know if trade route importance is affected by number of colonies in a system or if just the largest one of them is taken into account or how a colony is ranked for high traffic. I just think of it as a randomness associated with the artificial life simulation the game provides and I love it!!

Cheers

[MasterChief]

Thanks to all for the great disccusion and input![:)]

[Gareth_Bryne]

On a strategic side note, the lines are a good source of (publicly available) intelligence on crucial planets for you and your opponents. If a planet is a cargo nexus, it's a priority 1 military target. Period.

[Data]

So the more dotted lines lead to it the more period it is [:)]
I'm not a native english speaker so if the pun is not clear please don't hit me [:'(]