The only issue I really have is that players would end up asking "Why cant these ships just fly out the sector?", and only bad games/movies have you asking "Why doesn't the main character just..."

The fact is I rarely use defensive structures at all, and I have a defensive fleet at all the planets on my front line, and later on when they enemy has researched insurgency some in my back lines as well.

The advantages of having a mobile defencive fleet are many, and because you can shift them around, you only ever really need enough hold them off until reinforcements from the rest of your defencive fleet arrive, although I guess the temptation isalways there to add them to your attack fleet, and then you end up with undefended planets...

Flak Turrets would be nice, as carriers also own defense platforms, this might be better if fighters targeted fighters and bombers as they should be. Missiles would be good, but they might kind of make the LRM's a bit useless. If the missiles have as long a range as the LRM's it would also probably make them a bit too powerful. That's the problem with fixed defenses and siege units. If the fixed defenses can shoot as far as the siege, their too good, if not they get trivialised by the siege (I'm calling LRM's siege as thats the role siege usually plays in an RTS, killing fixed defenses).

In a separate post I had a similar idea to yours Nanite - privateer orbital structures. I didn't go into as much detail as you did for your idea, but maybe these planetary defense ships could be NPC controlled and built similarly to trade ships - only these supplement planet defenses.

I like the idea of not allowing them to jump to other planets (the explanation could just be that there are some ships that aren't built with phase jump drives due to prohibitively high costs of the technology).

Maybe after researching an orbital defense initiative tech you are able to actually control the privateer ships during defensive operations instead of them being NPC controlled...(maybe just a handful of frigates and a small cruiser).

Im more for the system-only ships than I am for more varied defences :/ allready as it is a system can get pretty clutted by gaus platforms and most importantly for me its a lot more fun fighting ships than it is fighting a big stationary gun

What about the possibility of a planet based defense system. I dont really mean like ships taking off (though that is a possibility), but something like missile launchers and possibly some laser cannons that are on the ground and can fire into space.

Also another thought is that in reality all of your stations would have some type of defense system, if for nothing else then to take out the occasional chunk of rock or ship debris, so it would make some sense if maybe all of the stations had at least a tiny gun on it. Basically large enough that it is worth it for them to be there at all, but not enough that it is more powerful then frigates, most likely it would be as powerful as a fighter laser (or even less maybe).

A possible special ability that could be researched and could be used by metal resource stations would be to fire a mass of the asteroid's metal at a target.

One possibility that could be used as a system only defense ship could be something like a ship that was retired but is brought back in service and is automated (automated in the sense that there are no crew on it, the player still controls it) and it is filled with explosives and it is sent at a target. The damage it could deal would be large, but the ship itself (in order to save on costs) would be very weak, no shields and very little armor. So basically these ships could probably take out a frigate in one hit, severely damage a cruiser, and do alot of damage to a cap ship (by alot I just mean like maybe a 10th of the bar). In order for these ships to be useful they would need to attack en mass so it wouldn't be cheap, but still, doing even a 10th of bar to a cap ship would be useful. Though you would have to somehow try and sneak them through so the other ships dont just attack them and wipe them out because they are very fragile.

Comments?

The planet would be no more heavily defended because the defense hangar would use up tactical slots that would be used for gauss cannons or hangars.



Well, why build hangars when you could build light carriers instead? Simple, it costs a lot less for hangars, and hangar's don't use fleet points. Why have 5 fleet supported ships sitting around a planet when you could have 5 basically free ones (once you buy them of course)?