If you wanted to find out about any differences, your best bet is hunting through the old changelog threads.

Or old posts from Steve in Mechanics (from before he started doing the changelog threads).

BTW, I've been moving a lot of threads (such as this one) from Mechanics to the Academy recently.  Generally speaking, you should prefer the Academy for "how does X work" threads such as this one.  This is because Mechanics is where Steve posts threads about rules changes that he's made, and where discussions of those rules changes take place.  So we try to keep the thread churn down in that board (for example to delay the time that the 7.10 change log discussion thread gets pushed off the front page).  The Academy and Chat are the two places I can think of where we expect to see a lot of threads go by.  For more information, there's a "Where should I post" thread in the FAQ board that also discussions Bugs and Suggestions.

John

Been set up with some jump gates built up a line of stars for several colonies.  Have no problem with civ ships
hauling back and forth on their own with cargo and colonists but have not seen any civ mines outside of Sol.
Do they eventually get around to building them in other systems too?  Is there a magic pop number for a planet
or colony where they will start setting up and offer to shoot stuff there?   thanks!