Freighters??

Admittidly, i'm a 4x noob, but i can't seem to find a way to get freighters to appear in my ship log to build. i will occasionally get a message recommending that i research "interstellar communications" to enable trade between planets, but i can't find that anywhere in the tech tree. i see xeno communications, but that's it.

help!

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There is a specific research field named 'Trade' that gives you access to the trade module. Uh, trying to remember the research tree here, it's universal translater, then trade. Someone will be along soon to correct me, I'm sure.

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thanks, that's help enough to get me started on the right path.

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i see. the ai is telling me to start building freighters by researching the "interstellar communications" tech, but such a tech does not exist! to add to the confusion, the "trade" tech isn't available yet in the campaign!

i loaded my custom map, researched it and sure enough, freighters became available. thanks!

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The campaign won't let you have trade for the first four or five missions.

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The campaign is a bad place to start playing imo, start with a few sandbox games on a medium map first to get a hang of the general game first.

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I also have a freighter question; hope it's ok for me to tack it onto this thread...

In my last game, I had the max number of trade routes going, which was 11. I got these by building 11 freighters, and sending them to different planets.

Then some pirate ships came by, and destroyed about 4-5 of my freighters. But when I looked at all my trade routes, all 11 were still there, and my trade income didn't look any less. So I thought maybe I needed to replace the freighters that were destroyed, so I built a few more and sent them out, but the game said I already had the max number of trade routes, and they just sat there.

How can freighters be destroyed and not affect my trading? Thanks!

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Freighters travel along those trade routes, but the income is not added until one of them returns to its planet of origin. When a freighter is destroyed, the enemy is essentially stunting your income by preventing any freighters from returning home, meaning you aren't actually generating any cash from the routes.

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But the trade screen says I'm making "309bc" per turn in trading...?

So what should I do when freighters are destroyed, kill ALL my trade routes, replace the destroyed freighters and then send them all back out again? That seems...cumbersome.

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just wanted to update and say that i did find out how to utilize the trade routes. (in a noob kind of way)

thanks for all the help guys, and yes, i did stop playing the campaign. i started a medium map with three other races.

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