I'm not 100% sure on how it adds up, but I do believe they add up. I also don't know if you can get a higher "cap" or if you just reach maximum culture quicker.

AKA: Devs, lets answer some questions here!



Your asteroid mines have a limited amount of "free" resources, easily gotten at and used. After thats gone, you have to use a refinery to take the "raw" material and refine it into usable stuff.

AKA: They let you harvest resources off depleted asteroids.



You have to have multiple trade centers for them to work. Once you build a trade centers, they send out trade ships to other trade centers that bring in cash flow. The longer the route between centers, the more cash you get out of it. You can't trade interstellar, alas, though refinery ships do go interstellar. This vastly weakens the effects of trade agreements, which allows your trade ships to visit "friendly" trade centers in enemy empires.



You can highlight a given resource, and it will tell you how much of that resource is currently in trade / refinery ships. Not really precise, but helpful. I can't tell you how long it takes for a given trade center to "pay off", but I will say that the more you build, the quicker they do so. And that they really increase your economy, to a huge degree.



Yes, all ships are upgraded once you research the technology, no retrofit needed (yet).

Thanks RL for answering all the questions you could. So you would want to have trade centers at the farthest points of your empire.

How about two trade centers at the same planet? I wonder if that would do anything for you?

Prior to the game being finalized a "What should be in the game manual" thread should be started. Game manuals are usually high on mythology and very low on facts involving game elements.

These folks could be the exception as they really respond well to players.

Oh, here is the question I forgot. Does increasing your population per planet do anything for you except survive a bombardment longer? That seems like quite a waste but I read that in the forum.

I was wondering if more population generated more taxes?

Yep, the planet upgrade does do this, although it takes a while to take effect since your citizens on that planet have to produce the extra citizens. The tooltip for the planet upgrade doesn't say this, but it does say that it increases the population of the planet, and since taxes are based on the tax rate multiplied by your empires population, it has the end effect of increasing tax income, but not the overall tax rate on the planet.