All resource mining works as follows...

Mining Starbase is mining 1 Durantium resource, this produces 1 Durantium resource for player to use or trade.

This resource is not cumulative over time meaning if you are mining 1 you only have 1 to use until it's gone it does not add up.  Think of it this way, I'm building a durantium ship component but, to keep it working it costs that 1 durantium resource per turn to keep it working.  

The good thing about this is if the mining base is destroyed the player can be negative and still have the component working, it does not cease to function.

If you build more mining modules or extra options to increase the yield then you can use more  

Resources are used in Ship components and Planetary Improvements.  I would love if they would let one terraform more planetary tiles

You forgot to tell him that you get it back after it is destroyed.

Thanks for bringing me back up to speed...time to get it on!

Trade Resources they value numer

Relics they only value one per...

I should test this but my brain with no knowledge about this would tell me that you will get resources back because it is no longer owning by you and the AI need to spend their resources to keep it. It will still working even they don't have enough resources for it because this also happen to the player. You can go in negative of specific resources and everything still working fine. It should has penalty for combat unit or randomly select shutdown the improvement.

Please ignore the fact that why the mining base won't mine anymore resources when one being in use, or it will turn into generic mine/refinery route that most of RTS game doing. Civilization 5 also does what GC3 doing. But the difference is, if you don't have enough strategic resources to feed (go into negative) then all combat unit using that resources will get -50% penalty to their strength. GC3 could do this if you went negative, all improvement and ship system using that resources will disable itself until you get adequate resources to feed them again.

You can be total scum and scam an AI by building a ship that fit every prototype modules to brim then sell it to an AI for high-price. It will collapse their resources and cripple it until it decommission the ship which AI rarely do.

Take note that this also happen in Civilization 5. You could build a tank (it require 1 oil) and gift it to an AI that doesn't even research a tank or has any tech that let them know what the heck is oil yet. They will get your tank but with -50% power in both attack and defense. The difference is; AI in Civ 5 know this and will retire it pronto since it eat their maintenance and resources. Also, you can't sell the combat unit in Civ 5, you can only gift it for free (technically, you could sell it if you play with human.)

Well my main complaint with the civ series is they removed some of the basic concepts that made the civ series what it was culminating the best was four because of it's features. Now In five they removed the most important fundemental features of the franchise using  micro management  as an excuse because of micromanagement they probably will not bring these back. Sala v. Now I understand micromanagement. I don't agree, but I understand. What doesn't make sense is why does a developer remove features that make the game fun while leaving in issues that could be improved. To be honest civilization doesn't do enough to ever of had a micromanagement issue.

Now I agree the resource is weird. This way it keeps you from being to powerful, but the real issue is that Stardock doesn't add anything that is not over the top. This is no different than precursor worlds, mercenaries, but only some of them others are rather weak, or the latest planetary events.

Assuming stardock realises that then they could change the resources, so it could give it by so many turns.

For the obvious reason you go into a negative, so as to penalise you for destroying a starbase after you trade it. A solution instead of this is not to let you trade the resource.

I think you might of hit it there. Instead of allowing one resource per ship per mine. You could have a limited number of resources per resources. Mining either one resource per turn, or a number of turns. This still doesn't negate my idea of having all buildings, ships, and technologies require resources.

Or you could go this way, and once the resources are used up randomly replace them.

Admittedly it's a RTS not a 4X, I still preferred the way Total Annihilation did things.

for each resource, you get X per second from each mine/generator/etc.  When building things, they took up Y resources/second.  So, you always had to balance the two, and you had to construct holding containers to deal with any excess. 

RTS have never adopted that model, and use the "bank" approach where you get and spend in discrete chunks.  4X games essentially have modeled something similar, though GC3's is a bit unusual in that it requires a fixed amount of a resource to always be available when you build something that requires it.

I'd really rather we go to at least the bank approach, where all resources are banked - i.e. each turn, mining a resource gets you 1 point, and various components/buildings cost some X number of points to build.  In other words, treat it like money.  Makes a lot more sense.

You either never play RTS or on drunk because every RTS use this "bank" system you are refer to.

I'll throw my hat in... 

I dislike the current system for special resources, it confused players and limits rather than expands on strategy options in my opinion.

The current method is kind of a clever way of representing a flow economy where you are producing a stream of resources. You have 1 Durantium, because that is representative of "1 constant stream of Durantium" which a ship or trade, is then utilizing constantly. If the ship is destroyed the stream is simply released from that burden. In this way, the system makes sense as an easier abstraction of things you see in games like Supreme Commander.

But that isn't obvious, and it doesn't make a lot of sense if you try to rationalize it in detailed ways (which you probably shouldn't) for example... why is a ship using a constant "stream" of Durantium... isn't it just infused into the hull? Maybe, maybe not, and it is irrelevant, but player's think about that sort of stuff and get confused.

It limits strategy however, in that it reduces the consequences of LOSING that ship. Essentially all you lose is the production time to replace it, the resources involved are essentially infinite. 

I would much prefer that Durantium be produced every X number of turns, deposited in your bank, and then you spend that Durantium when building a ship. It opens up options such as stockpiling, it simplifies trade (no trading for 50 turn BS), and means there is a real penalty to losing a ship, that resource is GONE.

It enhances wars of attrition and makes these special resources more valuable, while being way more understandable to your common newbie.

I like his thinking too.

These resource star bases all started off in Galciv 1 by giving a percentage bonus of some kind to your entire empire. Then they have kinda forced the resource system to do things its not really good at doing, but it works, it works with little things that don't make sense here and there.

I do try, but i cannot help but notice you have the ability of prototype ships to work with zero resources available that it needs..... seems to prove it only needs it for construction. Its a critical error in logic..... people who play strategy games are often the logical types, so we do not like it! Its a disturbance in the force lol