Ye you are right, I must have imagined the release of angry birds in space last week?!?!?!

Re: the actual post.

Could you not have the mines automatically hand over the minerals to you for use? This would only happen on your home planet where your base is as it's right there so clicking a button would just be a useless step (you don't have to click on a tiberium refinery to get the cash in c&c) , when you expand to another planet/system you then use a transport to collect the resources, maybe transports only hold so much material so you may need more transport etc, you maybe click the ship button then your transports and select the resources you want to bring back. Perhaps as you said these could be attacked? This method means only once you can build transport is it really worth expanding... Then again you kinda need transports to trade don't you?

hmmm, Maybe at the start you have to pay people to transport/trade your materials... Could be a good business in the game, providing transport for noobs Only ideas though dude, it's your game