Atlas node connections dont work as displayed

I spent like two hours pathing to this citadel on the bottom right in picture 1 just to be disappointed like 5 times. At first I thought it must be a joke that the path I chose is diverging from the citadel so much and when a line was finally connected I was almost relieved, only to discover that the connection doesnt work??? (See red marked node in picture 2) Also for some reason, I am able to start doing the yellow marked node without doing any adjacent nodes? God please fix, this is so discouraging.


Picture 1


Picture 2