Do the Civilians respond to mineral shortages? In real life, a shortage of any mineral would raise the price for that mineral and provide incentive for civilians to exploit the high price by setting up a mining operation.
No, they appear randomly one to 1-million chance. If this number rolls under your racial wealth they forum a new one, and a check is made every 5 days I think. They also expand their mining operation with a roll of one to 4-million, if its under your racial wealth they'll pop a new mine.
I would like to see civvie mining mass driver packets in the system view.
As for shipping lanes appearing. I seem to always get enough to to never have a need to build colony ships, and they take care of my misc. delivery needs. I tend to use my cargo fleets for mass repeating jobs, like take x from a 400 times.
I also have about 8 ships they can use. They have a crap luxury liner, a crap jump capable luxury liner, modern jump luxury liner. A crap colony ship, a modern colony ship, a crap freight a modern freighter and a crap geo ship.
They mostly build the crap freighter and colony ships. I've made those obsolete to encourage the sales of the modern one, as the system I plan on colonizing jump point is at pluto orbital line. And thats a two month journey for them.