#1: After you research the Extreme Planet colonization techs (Aquatic World, Toxic, World, Radioactive, etc. Just send a colony ship to the world to colonize it (like any other planet).

#2: Military Production is used to build ships in the current plant's starport. Social Production is used to build building on the current planet and research is for researching new technologies. Clicking on the Military production will speed up the construction of ships in the planet's starport.

#3: In order to "upgrade" ships you need to first build a new ship in the ship yard. Click the shipyard button, pick an existing ship and click upgrade (or start from scratch) and put weapons, defenses and engines on it. After you a complete, save it off and give it a name. You can now build these in your starports or (if the hull is the same size) you can upgrade your current ships to the new ones. Double click on a ship, click the upgrade button and select the new ship you just built. It will cost a bit of money to upgrade ships out in space.

#4: Mining bases (bases that are constructed by miner ships on asteroids) can be either taken by force or can be converted. To take by force you attack it with an armed ship then use your miner to build a new mine. This is a act of war.

To convert it, you need your influence to cover it and it may eventually join you on its own. This is not an act of war.

Planetary invasion is only used to take over enemy planets, not starbases or mines. You need to use troop transports (not colony ships) to take over enemy planets. (of course this is an act of war as well).

#5: You can take over resource bases by destroying the enemy starbase and building your own. This is an act of war. You can not take over starbases with influence. Destroying the base and building a new one, or trading for it are the only ways to take over a resource starbase.

There is also an instruction manual in the game directory on the hard drive. It has some other basic information in it as well.

As of yet I have never seen any Normal difficulty AI trade away a resource starbase for any price. Can't say if they will trade them on lower difficulty.

Some random tidbits that may have eluded you in this line of questioning.

Aquatic, Toxic, barren worlds etc each have a tech to let you colonize them. Those particular tech bars are divided into 2 halves, 2 different techs. The first tech lets you colonize that type of planet at all, however, the icon next to the planet goes from a red dot to a yellow dot. That means you *can* colonize it with a simple colony ship, however, it recieves only 50% of productions on that planet, so it builds very very slowly and isnt very worthwhile for long term projects...until...

You get the 2nd tech which makes it just a normal colony, with a green dot next to it, meaning it can be colonized and built on as normal.

For asteroid mining fields (im not particularly sure of how much production theyre worth or anything), usually unless your opponent is an influence powerhouse, a simple influence starbase created near an asteroid field will often flip it if theres no planet nearby to colonize.

Also in regards to mining astroids, i usually set my miner on automate on the first turn. It will seek out astroid fields all over the map on its own, and i have yet to have it run into trouble on its own. saves me lots of attention and effort for 1 ship to do 1, marginally annoying task.

And finally, one thing youll quickly discover about resource bases is that the opponents claim and build on resources very quickly. Early in the game if you spot resources you would be well advised to build a starbase on it asap, because even if its deep in your territory on a large map, it will *not* go unclaimed forever, I find usually the only ones that go unclaimed any long period of time are ones on the very edge or in corners of the map.

Just some tips from someone else who isnt exactly a veteran and had similar questions recently.

The AI is understandably reluctant to trade mining bases at any difficulty level. The only practical way I've found to trade for one is to wait until a civ comes begging for help during a war, then trade the mining base for a few dozen of your ships . Note, they don't have to be good ships....

  

I'll one-up that one: I position a cheap fighter next to the resources I camp, then sell them to the enemy civ and watch the base fall the next turn.

I've read a lot of threads in this forum over the last 3 or so days, and I don't quite know how I missed this one previously, but this has some invaluable insights and clear concise information. Thanx!