have the most recent version of DA, and ive gotten this bug. Dont use fleets of large ships though,so i can only confirm it for my tiny ships and cargo hull ships.
Flamerman
Contrary to the direction of this thread, I very often find trade extremely useful (excluding military games). The key to using trade effectively is economic bases, stationed around 1 planet where all freighters are coming from. This allows for nearly quadruple the normal revenue. While I may be wrong, I also don't see a point in getting all freighters from your econ planet. I thought that improvements for economy on planets only increased tax revenue, not trade revenue.
what about large ships vs small ships? I know it seems like an odd question, butafter several games on normal difficulty, the AI has defeated me several times with large amounts of miniaturization and medium hull ships. Is it just a problem with a lack of adaption to different weapon styles or are medium hull ships which can be built faster more effective than huge ships which take many turns to build?