Don't know my current settings on my ludicrous map, but I have as much Durantium as Prometion and Thulium, only Elerium and Antimatter are much less frequent.

My resources are on abundant, so I can always find Duranthium.

Hmm, yeah not sure if this is a problem for others. I'm keeping an eye thought if we need rebalance something.

I think the resource usage should be rebalanced again. It was once, when they changed kinetic weapons from using durantium to thulium. But the whole resource system still seems in disarray, the demand for durantium is higher than for any other element. Occasionally your demand for promethion spikes, but durantium still seems as most needed. Also weapons usage of those elements is somehow whacky. You use thulium for support modules and railguns, so you have to choose which one of those you want to have. Also last tier of missile and kinetic weapons use several units of them each, but Doom Ray costs only 1 Elerium.

This exact reason is why I switched to a different game. I was hopeful they might add a black market or more missions are at least something to acquire resources that just didn’t spawn on the map. But you don’t know about the durantium shortage until you play synthetic. To be fair synthetic is still OP as hell if the map has the durantium you will run away with it. If it doesn’t you are boned.

My murderous machines have been shelved until I can figure out how to get some. 

Easy enough to trade off the NPCs when someone has a supply but when there is almost none or exactly none then you are just shit out of luck.

I really hope they address this, I love galactic civilizations but I don’t want to play 7 hours into a game before I realize how screwed I am. 

Of course the resources need to be rebalanced.   I was playing with the infinite-money bug, and I was still hurting because I simply did not have enough durantium.  Xeno Factories would still be stupid to upgrade, WITHOUT the durantium requirement.  Meanwhile, what is Snuggler Colony useful for?

Couldn't low-class planets have some Durantium mines?   Just like thulium mines.   Or have class-0 planets which say, "This planet has durantium," and you have to use Kiln of Worlds on it to get it.

The black market doesn’t exist the galactic market place does but it has limited quantities. I was hoping they would add a second market place to make the pains of resource management a little more bearable when the map screws you. A market usable by all government but with something like X7 the cost of the regular resource so that and 1/7th the sell value. Also with resources unavailable on the regular market would be X15 so a resource missing from the market place could be brought with 15k which I think would be balanced.

Pro tip when trading with the npcs never try and trade for more than 1/4th of their supply and make sure to have good relations with them. It is the reason why I work hard to keep well supplied races happy with me so I can trade them for what I need. The computer will give you its resources much cheaper than the current market place but if no one has any supply you are still fucked.

Also, there's plenty of SB modules giving very gratious influence bonuses without costing too much, so I use these (no matter whether I need them) to boost my AoI, and therefore Tourism income. A nice side effect is that now that habitable planets are starting to get scarce, I've already gained a couple from influence because the AI was stupid enough to colonize them.

The main use for that income is buying Durantium and Durantium/Prometium-generating SBs from the AIs. Also techs - I'm focusing so hard on mining and other industrial stuff that I'm still missing out on a number of first age techs!