I don't want to drag this out, and so I will be ok to not get an answer to this. I am extremely appreciative of this website and all the work that has gone into it, it is near perfect.
But I will just note that the (Hadsch Halla) example I am attaching now has me thinking again that my previous (Gleen) example was a bug after all.
In the Hadsch Halla example the big federation to the right has just been formed. If the federation forming had worked as in the Gleen example, I should not have been able to make a fed with so many sattelites, since by using the planet in the top middle of the map, a more logical fed could have been formed that uses 3 sats less. (And by using the blue planet halfway, a fed could have been formed that uses 2 sats less). It seems very arbitrary that I was able to make the longer fed, connecting the planet in the lower right instead. However, when I read the game rules, this is exactly how I would expect it to work : choosing which planets will make up 7 is arbitrary, only connecting those with the smallest number of sats is mandated.
So in summary, I think the Hadsch Halla example I posted does not follow the same rules as the Gleen example, and the Gleen example is a bug.
