Recipie for Doom..

[Neo]

The easiest way I have found to defend planets just captured is to have them launch a couple of turns of mines right way. Its faster than weapons platforms and you don't need to keep ships there as long as you leave enough troops to keep their mood ok so they can keep cranking out mines if necessary. Works well against the AI anyway since I haven't seen one yet that actually includes mine sweepers in attack fleets so they can never clear more than about five mines in one spot without getting themselves blown up.

Then again, here I am a Private giving advice to a Captain - you probably already now all this.