In GalCiv 1, players could trade ships and starbases with minors. This would be a nice addition to GalCiv 2, given how minors do get the jump on the majors. They should be expensive to acquire, but still on the trade list. The AI could trade for them as well as the player, so balance would not be affected. Just an idea!

Yeah about the only reliable way I have found to pry the minors greedy little fingers off of resources is either take the obvious route and blow up thier starbases and replace them with your own or a slightly more devious approach.

The way to remove that bothersome minor starbase without declaring war on them is to send a combat ship capable of destroying the target starbase and a constructor to the starbase. You then gift the combat ship to a race that the target minor race is at war with then 9 times out of 10 the AI race will blow up the starbase leaving the resource open to your waiting constructor. The only catch here is you have to make sure that the ship is within the AI's logistics range so it can actualy attack the starbase. Well that and you might have to engineer a war with the minor to pull this off but you know what they say about making an omelet .

Edit: One way I used to get starbases was by buying them outright. Course this lead to a mildly cheesy victory method which involved me getting enough surplus BCs to buy an economyg resource base outright then using the increas to buy another econ starbase etc. I accidently won an infulence victory this way.

While the minors trading for colonization tech seems wrong, I don't really see a problem with the minors grabbing resources. It prevents any one major from becoming too powerful without taking out a minor or two which should hert their reputation with other civs. They could make this a tipping point. If an evil race declares war on a minor, it could bring retribution from the good races. This might also might help balance good/evil more.