Matrix Games Forums

"I have mines" != "I have a sufficient stockpile of currently-available resources to meet my empire's current resource demands." The resources at the mines may already be earmarked for sale somewhere, or the mines may not have a sufficient quantity of resources on hand to meet demand, or the mines may not have had sufficient quantities of resources available when the computer ran the numbers and determined that the shipyards needed more (insert list of resources here).

I think pirates buy all their resources. You don't pay upkeep for pirate civilian ships and bases, so to counter that I think you pay for all the resources they generate. Regardless of if they're currently needed or not.

The negative mining thing is more likely related to how corruption isn't calulated properly for pirate games.