[Puke]

yep, you need a star for planet creators but not for destroyers.

and yes, weapon platforms use ship weapons, so they will be limited as well. I have ammended the games description on PBW to also include shield destroyers, so that boarding parties can be a factor.

and as to random movement and fleet assembly, it wont be a problem at all. The Last time I tested it (a few Versions back) random movement worked as follows:

The game picks a random sector, and moves all ships / bases / units towards it by X number of sectors. in this case X is 12, so that everyone will end up in the same sector at the end of each turn, but it will be a different sector each turn, and everyone will take a slightly different path to get there, depending on their point of origin.

and no, there wont be a star.