Satellies: Major suckage? Need help.

[Iron Giant]

I like to play a somewhat defensive game. I tend to give my race 2000 points and the other races 5000, with lots of AI bonuses. This means they are fielding fleets of ships while I am still building up.

So, I'm constantly looking for ways to defend my warp points.

Mines rock. I can quickly get most contested warp points up to 100 mines each, even early on. But as time goes on, they start to wear that down and I want to have something else there to defend the warp point.

So, I've been trying to use Satellites. Last night, a BB came through, wiped out the Last of my mines and I fired my 100 satellites (med sat weapon mount, with 2 heavy DUAC in each satellite!! so 200 heavy DUAC!) and all they did was plink his shields a little because they were all stacked on one side of the warp point and then the BB ran away. Ugh. For all the effort it took to get 100 satellites at a warp point, that was a pretty miserable showing.

I did notice he had ecm and my satellites did not have the bonus to hit computer (forgot name). But man, having to replace 100 satellites is a lot of work.....

I tried using missles on satellites, but you HAVE to fire all 100 missles at only one target. What a waste! By the time you can fire again, they enemy always moves away.

Am I missing something? Does anyone have a killer satellite design? tactic? idea?

I was thinking, what if I put a starbase with the satellites? Would the AI attempt to fight the starbase or run away from that as well?