[albireo]

Thanks Alneyan!
I saw the new line above Maintenance, but noticed the number was going DOWN rather than UP and thought that it wasn't related somehow. My ship sits in an astroid field each turn but mining the number gets less. I was thinking the mining number would get bigger until it "filled" the ship? (or until the cargo bays were full??) and I had to shuttle it back and forth to my world?
I could see that I'm using cargo to transfer a population and in addition actually got ONE mine transferred in orbit around a planet, but figured I was doing something wrong since it went into the "cargo" section in the planetary screen. Also, I wondered if I had to go get more mines each time to plant more... (how do I tell my planet to make more?? or less??) Even more confusing for me is loading the mines to start with. I discovered that you have to "make" the mines on a planet - I see only one mine in the place under the population icon in my planet screen - how do I get more mines to load up? How many mines can I fit on a ship? As you can see I'm pretty lost about this...
Along the same lines, I see my weapons platform in the "cargo" section of my planet (along with the mines) which led me to believe that I should transfer it somehow to a large ship and tow it to another planet??
When I try making a ship to deploy mines I build the ship and put how many cargos per mines? I discovered that I had to have a cargo container (or storage??) or else I the ship wouldn't have mines on it...
Sorry I'm soooooo DENSE! I REALLY have read through the newbe FAQ but it covers mostly strategies not the regular nuts and bolts of how to do things. I've seen some other guides, but they are all either strategies for people knowing what to do or for folks just getting started and don't know the very basics...
Joe