I know that the game frowns on turtling, which was a large adjustment for me. Once I got past that I basically expanded with a few fleets, found the key crossroads worlds, established a strong defense there, expanded again, lather, rinse, repeat.

My question is this... what do you do with the old crossroads worlds and your original world clusters? Do you dismantle the defenses around those in favor of conserving resources for the new worlds? Or you do you leave the defenses in place but idle?

I typically move my reserve ships to the new border worlds and form new fleets with them. My rear has almost no ships except trade ships and the few onsies and twosies ships I built and forgot about. Yes, a few single enemy ships, mostly scouts and the occasional light frigate, get past my border defenses and then wander aimlessly around my back yard eventually getting picked off by Hanger Defenses and turrets, but there is basically nothing back there.

I realize that might be bad strategy doctrine because if a large enemy fleet decided to sweep past the border worlds instead of fighting there I'd be fighting a running battle as I pulled my fleets off the expansion and put them on defense.

I have 3 fleets right now. 2 attacking and one playing rear guard.

What's the general feeling about how to handle this?

And on a separate note, I have a handful of fleet ships that feel like sitting most battles out by parking at the edge of the gravity well nad not doing anything. Is this normal? Their course bars show that they are headed out-system, but they don't actually leave, they are simply sitting there.

Mick