weapon platforms are really useful for one thing:
killing annoying ships trying to blow up your NEWLY COLONIZED planets.
One of the things that the AI tries to do is always target your newest planet. Therefore, i always take a colonizer and a transport: the colonizer has the coloney and 20kt population and the transport has about 1000kt weapons platforms
(weapons platform specs)
1x plat computer core (10k)
3x Capital Ship Missles (150k)
2x Armor (20k)
2x Sensors (20k)
Actually, the armor is in some ways better than the sheilds because you get the armor
10k = 70 pts protection
while sheild
40k = 20 pts protection
so for the same 40k,
40k = 280 pts protection
so for 40k you can ward off two wave motion hits plus a coulpla small weapon bLasts.
