Rare ore at HW?

[Supamand]

For some reason, the ONLY thing I receive in trades is rare ore. I trade with Terran, lava, and water planets so far... My CO progress is 0/4000000000.

My trade status was also the same, until I did another trade with someone else. Now I'm racking up both. This is in Irkalla.

I ran about 10 trade routs and dont see any progress at all. Plus after the one rout is completed my ship is not under AI control anymore. Is that normal? Do you have to set up a trade rout for each go around?
What I've been doing is using harvesters to go to other guys planet and set my main planet as destination.