I noticed that many of my systems have problems earning dust, and found the very negative factor "distance with empire" in the detailed dust report:
How does this mechanic work exactly? How is the distance calculated (to the starting system, or something else?). Are there any ways to reduce this, as it is pretty much crippling my economy even though the systems themselves are very strong.
If you colonize a system outside of your colored influence area you create an outpost which carries this penalty. After 30 turns without being blockaded, your outpost becomes a colony and therefore generates its own influence area thus removing the penalty and starts to get the expansion disapproval as Garm stated in the question comments.
As far as I know, if another Planets influence area covers your outpost it wont get this penalty and will instead instantly get the expansion disapproval.
