You're not supposed to, the mod doesn't use them. This origin of this mod (a previous mod), was to replace the pop and tile system, but with the changes coming in 2.2, vanilla planet mechanics will be adapted to the mod.


You can colonise manually like in the base game, but you'll notice that many red icons pop up on planets everywhere within (and just outside of) your borders. This is the mod's autonomous colonisation system. This is supposed to represent the many smaller colonies that will develop throughout an empire over time. Soon, a mechanic will be added to allow these colonies to be 'promoted' to a core world (a vanilla-style economy) when they reach a certain size as long as there is room within the system cap.


They are removed when industry starts mining them. You'll notice that the resource icon disappears, and an industry icon replaces it.


While individual industry will vary, what is important is that the economy overall can provide enough of a tax base to cover your expenses. If you can have decent budget policies settings, a reasonable fleet, and a tax rate preferably below 70-80%, industry is keeping up :)


Below 40% doesn't really bring benefits, and 60-70% or higher may negatively affect economic growth. I'd leave it at 50% unless you feel you really need to increase it.


Lower your budget policy settings, increase taxes, reduce fleet size. Try to keep standard of living decent to prevent order and economic efficiency from slipping.

The mod is about compromise - you may not be able to max everything, so be prepared to settle for less than max policies, a smaller fleet size etc.


You can use minerals for ships, but the intended method of purchasing ships is via the mod's military tab on the top bar. This prices ships in credits. Minerals are there for those that want to build using starbases and the fleet manager, and for various other things that can't be priced in credits (vanilla restricts ships, stations etc to be priced in minerals).


No, mostly useless at this point. Hopefully with the adapation of the 2.2 planet mechanics, most of these will be practical again.

I've also toyed with getting rid of these and just providing gameplay bonuses based on action. So we can still define our empire, but based on how we are leading it, rather than pre-defining it.


Lazy way of 'disabling' them. They're redundant now, and I'll properly disable them in the next version.


Science output is currently flat and there are no tech research penalties due to pops, colonies, systems etc, so science deposits would unbalance this. I could make them give stored research, but the easiest way would be to convert them into a sort of industry of their own, with each location providing a small boost.