I really don't think so, but it sounds like as good a guess as any. I do not let my survey ships travel that freely. If the same might be true for colony ships, then perhaps that is what is happening, but, let's face it, such a message for such an occurrence, regardless of the ship class, goes beyond confusing. Worse, I had no indication what so ever of the location of the problem, or the name of the ship involved, hence, no clue what so ever to help me figure out what to do about what ever the problem may have been.

Just in case anyone is wondering, I am calling this a BUG, hence my reporting it via a ticket.

I am also guessing that any ship involved in this problem would have stopped moving and I would have seen it when I went through the inactive ships during my next turn. I did see a colony ship that was inactive, but was a long ways from its previously assigned target destination (a planet which had become colonized by another civ).

I opened a ticket for this problem a long time ago, and reported it in this thead.

That thread is now locked.

The problem as I reported it was caused by my colonizer, on autopilot to a colonizable world, arriving there only to find that it had been beaten there by an AI.  It had nothing to do with trade ships, and the message was therefore doubly misleading.  If this is the same thing you're seeing, then apparently the bug was never fixed.

Erischild: The last ship selected during your turn remains selected through End Of Turn processing, so you cannot count on the message to refer to the ship shown as selected.

Mormegil, thanks for your response.

I no longer have a saved game prior to this happening. I will watch for it and preserve it the next time I see it.

However, this message is still useless unless it gives more information, such as a ship or fleet name or a planet name.