Ya, like in most games route find algorthims will always find the path of least jumps

This applies to more than just trade ships I've noticed; fleets themselves and rally points force the onboard AIs of ships to take the "path of least hops."  Quite annoying when you have multiple fronts and precise strategy is a must.  I wonder how difficult it would be to set up a simple waypoint system in a future patch with which you could pre-plan the routes of both military and civilian ships?

*Sorry for the double post* still learning how to forum.

I've noticed what you guys are talking about as well.  I just had something odd happen myself. I had a fleet split and go into two separate gravity wells to get to another one two jumps away.  All I did was to click once on the gravity well I wanted them to end up in, and they split!

I'm not sure why that happened.  Could it be because one route was quicker for some of the ships, and for the ships on the other side of the fleet formation the second route was shorter?  Why didn't the fact that it was a fleet keep them all together for the jump?

It's not a huge deal to me, I'm just a little confused.