A Few Newbie Questions

-Use your miner ships to upgrade them, the same way you build them.
-Just in the AoI, the area of influence.
-For DL/DA it's generally Manufacturing Centers and either Research Academies or Invention Matrices.  For TA, I'm not sure if the same rules apply-some costs have been tweaked, in particular both maintenance costs, as well as research costs to unlock said buildings.  So you might be better off with a lower level of buildings for longer.
-I believe all trade goods are civ-wide.  As far as GAs, events (excluding colonization), etc, with very few exceptions (if memory serves, the political capital is the ONLY one, and even then only halfway), they have a civ-wide effect when at -all- possible, and a planetary effect when not so.
-They do NOT increase trade revenue.
-In TA, with the ability to make a ship a much bigger target by placing an advanced module on it, it may be viable to surround it with plenty of smaller ships.  They also happen to be cheaper, even when they're of comparable firepower, although the difference isn't necessarily really noticeable up to medium.
-While TA has changed the terraforming rules somewhat, the PQ4 worlds still grow up to be great; on average, about PQ15.  PQ5, 6, and 7, on the other hand, will only pick up 3 tiles, becoming 8, 9, and 10 respectively.  You can add additional tiles (and quality) via the Biosphere Modulator (Drath tree, can't be traded) and/or the Weather Control Zenith (Arcean tree, can be traded)-but only in TA.

    (Quoting Ashantai) is there any reason building tiny or small ones anymore?

  Fleets can hold more tiny ships - good with military starbase assistance because each ship gets the defence/attack value added.

  So a +1 ship assistance on a fleet of 4 ships gives that fleet a (free!,  once the starbase has the module) +4 attack.  Ships need more than zero defence to get the starbase defence assist.

  I haven't worked out which ship of a fleet gets attacked first,  but I'd go for that if it is the largest.

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Zarnick, I donn't remember the specifics, but the advanced modules act as a modifier on the targeting equation-something on the order of 25 or 50 times normal.  While it's possible to have ships other than the module ship be targeted, it's not likely unless it's intentional.

One additional caveat: Due to the way the targeting algorithm works, if you place no weapons on your module ships, they'll be targeted last.  While not quite logical, this is presumably attempting to emulate the fact that your weaponized ships are trying to protect it, or another similarly unarmed vessel, such as a transport.

I don't know how the system in TA works regarding ship sizes, but in DL I never bother with BB's or Dreadnoughts anymore. I remember reading several guides when I was first learning the game that all said don't bother with the highest levels of miniaturization. I'd have to say I disagree. 

By the time the game progresses to the advanced stage, and everyone is arming their warships with high-level weaponry, it's simply not cost effective to put much, if any defense on your ships. It costs 2-3 times as much to counter the equivalent weapon, and so will take longer to build. And chances are the ship won't survive anyways.

So given that, the extra mini bonus from researching higher mini levels, and getting the Hyperion Shrinker TG lets me pack more firepower on a smaller hull than my enemy's large hulls. My tactic is then to outproduce whomever I'm fighting because it takes me less time to build smalls & mediums than battleships and dreadnoughts.

I might add that I'm not playing at the very highest levels of difficulty which might alter things. All I know is that it works for me.  

To upgrade the asteroid fields you have to research the "Space Mining". Then you have to command your space miner ship to go mining by either clicking on any given asteroid field or by setting it to automate.

The trade thing with starbase is that it has to be in cover with the trade-route lines to give its effect, which I refer to the starbase's area of effect ring thingy. I found it good to put an economic starbase right on the trade lines. As long as the frieghter passes by the starbase's area of effect it gives the trade boost.

Trade goods gives often abilities to your whole civilization (overall). For example the "Harmony Crystals" gives +20% morale which means when you have build it it increases your morale by that percent in your stats. If you have +10% morale in your stats and then manage to get the Harmony Crystal you will have +30% morale, which on every planets gains its benefit.

The tiny and small hull ships can be very good if you got much miniature ability. As it lets you put more stuffs on ships. Now I am refering to the tech "Basic Minaturization". When you get more of does techs the small and tiny hull ships can be pretty useful. As they cost very little but does not let you put much stuffs on them until you have a higher miniaturization skill.

Planets should always be colonized no matter the cost. They can be put to good use later on, even if it is PQ 3! When you later gets the biological techs like "Soil Enhancement" you will understand.

Mandrall

Thanks for your help!

Currently I am playing as Yor, and doing quite well. However, I have a problem. With Advanced Charging Stalks my PQ26 world (right next to Iconia System, and barren so I could colonise it right away) has a current pop limit of 38 billion. But unfortunately to population is at 21 billion and my approval is going down, down, down. On my capital it's already at 41%.

How do I get approval up except by building the one per planet buildings and Charging Stalks...the later of which increases my pop limit even further!

My current tax rate is 39%, so not high. The more my pop goes up the harder it is to maintain approval!

I tried building the trade good harmony crystals but it appeared to do nothing? Also, I built a Secret Police Centre, but that also did nothing!

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Secret Police Center does not do exactly what the description says; I forget the specifics, but it's effectively useless.  I believe it's 20% for one planet.

Harmony crystals are not bugged*, however you will have to re-adjust your tax rate to notice the approval numbers change, or force the game to update the numbers by opening Civ Manager and viewing your stats.

Incidentally, there does appear to be a bug, wherein trade goods built by another race do not give bonuses when you purchase them in trades-and this applies to selling them to the AI as well.  However, if you build it yourself, that's not an issue, and if I remember correctly, only Gravity Accelerators were so affected.

TA changes things up a bit, yes, with the Yor in particular, with new dynamics for farms and morale, but you still don't want to go over ~20B per planet (with, literally, maxed out morale), or perhaps as much as ~22B per HW.

One of the biggest problems with the alternative trees, IMO, is that they barely have access to any trade goods-which contributes significantly to the morale shortfall you're experiencing.

However, as TA does add a number of race-specific mining and/or production modules, you ought to be able to fill in much of the gap if you manage to secure sufficient morale resources.

So would you suggest just demolishing some of my stalks and losing population in order to up my long term approval?

You could always ferry the excess population to your less populated planets before demolishing some stalks, using transports.
If you don't have decent morale buildings and technologies yourself, it's often a good deal trading to get some off the other races. Buildings such as a political capital on your homeworld help a lot to get its approval to decent levels (though still lower than your other planets)

In a practical sense, it is impossible to get population above 23-24 billion and I would not recommend you trying to get the values above that because it is not practical to build your planets with the intention of getting 30+ billion population.

Besides, 23-24 billion is A LOT to begin with anyway.

For the morale buildings, good civilizations to trade morale tech with are the Torians (best end-game morale building ever: the Hot Springs) and the Thalians(sp?) (Their morale tech give out some nice morale boosts and one of them also give your engines a kick.)

Hope this helps.