[God Emperor]

As final note, I must admit that I dont use them very much. I prefer ships and fighters (if point defence hasnt become prevalent) to defend planets. Later on in the game you should be defending warp points so planetary defences become somewhat academic....

Early on in the game I use my Explorer class small transport, which has two satellite bays and can hold 10 satellites. During tactical combat, it can launch the satellites at sufficient distance from the planet to make attacks by one or two destroyers class ships or lower, suicidal in the case of the AI or stalemate against a human opponent.


Usually resource stocks and shipyard capacity are not so tight that you cannot have at least one or two ships in each of your border systems that has colonies....