Ah, so that's why they haven't gone to Heavy Shields... I might have to go in and tweak the AI files (I'll be sure to send them to you, to check/add in the mod), even if it won't matter since I'm about to plague the AIs Last remaining homeworld....
Well, for slave yards... I was planning to build enough value improvement plants so that when I scrapped the research facilities (one at a time) and built the slave yards I would have 250% in each resource when the Last one was finished. I then cursed for a long time when I discovered planet value doesn't affect them
So right now I have five or six slave yards, I was going to start scrapping research centers and building them on every world when I started to lose minerals faster than I could convert, then I captured an AI SYS. So I now have a BattleStation mineral miner over a planet/moon with 270% or so minerals, to be finished in two turns, and another to be built at a similar planet/moon 9 turns after that, solving my resource problem. I usually get about 1 DN/turn, a ~3000 mineral scrap on site, ~15000 if I take it in to the recycler (not often, since they're usually fairly damaged, with low supplies, and it's a 5 turn trip with an intact ship, and several "rogue" DNs along the way), it's getting fewer now as my ships are just blowing them up. I forget maintainance, but it won't be a problem soon
I already have fighters doing guard duty, mostly in home systems, with one group guarding a miner in hostile territory... 30 with 3xsDUC have taken out three DNs
I only have three satellites in my whole empire, both are 1xCompCore, 1xHyperOptics, 1xStealthArmor, one in home system, the other cloaked in the system with fighters/miner. I never bothered with full fleged production of fighters (I don't think I have more than 100), I had to focus on mines in the early part of the game, and then ships became faster/cheaper than fighters w/ carrier.