Mining Starbases?

A1:  Mining star bases are used to extract resources from the special nodes you can see floating in space.  You then spend these accumulated resources to build special buildings, improvements, and ship components.  You can also trade them, but I don’t recommend it most of the time as other nations don’t offer you enough in return.  I do buy from others when I am desperate.  The engineering tech page has a path which will allow you to slowly upgrade your mining star bases and ratchet up the income stream.

 A2:  Distance from the home world has no impact on mining starbase income.  Whatever is covered by the starbase area of control and not already claimed by someone else can be mined by you.  Normal AOC is radius five.  Vigilant trait in race creation ups this to radius six.  There is a path under the Pragmatic Ideology which gives +2.  Very deep in the tech tree you can raise this again.

You will always need Durantium and Prometheon, try to prioritize those ASAP.  Hope this helps!

Note also that star bases of all types generate influence, and that if any asteroids fall within your zone of control due to your influence expanding, you can build mining bases on them.  While the benefits of asteroid mines do fall off as the distance to the planet they contribute to increases, it's still generally a good idea to build them since they add directly to the planet's raw production.

BTW, is that Jewel Staite in your avatar pic?

Starbase defense and sensor modules improve your starbase's influence growth.

You can play the game without building mining starbases. Most things that need resources are the starbases themselves.

You can train more legions, but that process needs 5 durantium per legion. You need a military academy to train legions. Promethean is needed for the promotion of some citizen types.

If the mining base includes a precursor item (the diamonds), you can add a module to "harvest" that as well as any special resources.

If you have the correct government types, the market tab becomes available and you can purchase the special resources for a fee. Of course, if you are mining them, you can also sell them there.

The AI's are much better now in building bases to obtain these, so building advanced scout is more critical if you want these. The production is much lower since Intrigue, so each mining base is more critical to success.

I thought that she was talking about the asteroids, not the resources. Those are the best way to increase your raw production. They have to be in you influence, and don't build them if your more than 46 away. Though I actually halve that number.