Resource gathering is present in the game's design, in the traditional sense, and to be honest, it doesn't seem to me that Petroglyph has fully hammered how it's going to work in the long run. I was told that the amount of resources at your disposal is tied directly to how many planets are in your possession. Certain planets will yield certain types of commodities -- if you control the Mon Calamari homeworld, for instance, you'll have the ability to crank out their neato capital ships -- with central, densely-populated worlds naturally being "worth" more than remote, barren backwater systems. Bases factor into this, too. You'll have to establish a base on any world you control before it becomes truly defensible -- in other words, before you're able to crank out units from it. Not all planets are created equal in this sense, however; the aforementioned podunk planets won't be able to support truly high-end bases capable of generating the most elite units in your army. Then again, these systems probably won't see as much action as the Hoths and Yavins of the galaxy, so I guess it balances out.