So I love the game... Completely addicted to it. It's pretty much everything I've hoped for since I started following development over a year ago.

But I have a few questions that I haven't seen addressed in other threads.

1) Trade Ports... I know they increase credit income. I vaguely understand that it depends on the length of your longest trade route. But I'm also pretty sure there's more to it... Does placing a second Trade Port in a given grav well give you any substantial increase in trade income? Is it worth placing a single Trade Port in every grav well, regardless of where they are or how far they are from your longest trade route?

2) Culture... I know that culture gives several benefits, the most important of which being allegiance increase and better tax income. But I'm largely curious about the way culture progresses through systems. If I picked a planet somewhere in the back of my empire and chose to make it a "culture center", placing down 3-4 towers, would culture continue to spread across the entire map? Are uncolonizable systems the only thing that stops the spread of culture (outside of enemy culture)? Would culture continue to spread at the same rate across each system from my one culture center? Or does it eventually slow and stop depending on distance from the source?

3) Novalith/Megalith/Advent gun... The descriptions of these guns say they cannot fire between systems, only within a single system. Yet I've read several posts stating it's possible to fire these guns between systems. When I attempted this with the Novalith I'm pretty sure it didnt let me fire from one system to another, as the description indicated... What's the deal?

4) Phase Inhibitors... When you place a Phase Inhibitor you see a defined radius of effect... This may seem like a dumb question, but does the Phase Inhibitor only work inside that radius? Or does it affect the entire system? I only ask because If I place the inhibitor at the very edge of buildable space I can only just barely cover Phase routes with the radius of the inhibitor.

5) Star to Star phase jumping... Simple questions. Is placing a blockade fleet around a star the only way to stop a star to star phase jump? Is there a max distance on these phase jumps or can a fleet jump to any star, regardless of distance?

I think I had a few others, but I can't remember so I'll post them once I do. I'd refer to the manual, but I accidentally left it at a friend's house and I have yet to pick it up... I'm just impatient to learn more about the game, haha.

Thanks for any answers and responses.