Tentative PD PDC

[Felius (OP)]

So, I'm playing with a Meson PD PDC design to throw around, and I'd like opinions on the design:

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Decius class Point Defence Base    45,000 tons     3399 Crew     7819.6 BP      TCS 900  TH 0  EM 0
Armour 20-112     Sensors 1/24     Damage Control Rating 30     PPV 435.2
Hangar Deck Capacity 1000 tons     Troop Capacity: 5 Battalions   

Quad R18/C6 Meson Cannon Turret (20x4)    Range 180,000km     TS: 25000 km/s     Power 24-24     RM 18    ROF 5        1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1 1
PDC Fire Control S08 180-25000 H50 (1)    Max Range: 360,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     97 94 92 89 86 83 81 78 75 72
PDC Fire Control S04 90-25000 H50 (2)    Max Range: 180,000 km   TS: 25000 km/s     94 89 83 78 72 67 61 56 50 44
Inertial Confinement Fusion Reactor Technology PB-1 (22)     Total Power Output 528    Armour 0    Exp 5%

Active Search Sensor MR5-R1 (2)     GPS 24     Range 5.8m km    Resolution 1

ECCM-4 (3)         
This design is classed as a Planetary Defence Centre and can be pre-fabricated in 18 sections
A few explanations on the design:
The extra Reactors are in case the enemy manages to get a lucky hit with a meson and destroy one of them, to allow me to keep the same rate of fire. I'm tempted to make them less likely to explode but it's probably best to wait a bit until I have further reactor tech to reduce the chances of running low on power.
I plan to have a basically dedicated sensor pdc with much larger active sensors, but as a backup I gave it a small, size 0.5 active sensor, so it can run by itself if it needs to. It has two of them so I can have a backup if one of them is taken out. (And also because I had the spare space to complete the 45000 tons, and the sensor cost little anyway.

Opinions? Should I have more turrets? Less turrets? The biggest costs in the design are basically the fire controls, should I have less of them? Ignore the costs and get a couple more?

[Bouchart]

Why have fire controls with different ranges?

[Theokrat]

I would say make it a final-fire system, i.e. seriously downsize the firecontrolls through the range modifier (33%-50% maybe). Remember you can only engage as many salvos as you have FCs, so while you have 80 shots, you can only distribute them between 3 salvos at the moment.

[Felius (OP)]

I would say make it a final-fire system, i.e. seriously downsize the firecontrolls through the range modifier (33%-50% maybe). Remember you can only engage as many salvos as you have FCs, so while you have 80 shots, you can only distribute them between 3 salvos at the moment.

With it set to final fire, would it still protect the whole planet? What about possible ships in orbit?

The Fire controls with different ranges: What I had in mind is that it'd be able to start firing with decent accuracy at enemies further away, but having only long ranged fire controls would end far too costly.

[Redshirt]

One lucky hit, and the fire control's down, and you're toast. Why not make it a lot smaller? Separate out the hanger and troop space into another PDC, and reduce the turrets and power plants until you can get it down to just a few sections (maybe as small as two.) Then build nine of them. Or twenty. Or a hundred. Bigger isn't always better. I'd want to have the choice of concentrating fire or focusing on multiple targets. Especially if it's PD- you need more fire controls to target multiple salvos.

[Theokrat]

With it set to final fire, would it still protect the whole planet? What about possible ships in orbit?

Yes, final fire protects everything in range, but only fires just before the impact. The only exception is CIWS with its "final fire (self only)", which works like final fire except, well its only for the ship itself.

By the way it can be somewhat better to build Orbital gauss-gun stations. They usually fare much better per cost in intercepting missiles, but on the other hand also require maintenance.

Yes that would all work.
The Fire controls with different ranges: What I had in mind is that it'd be able to start firing with decent accuracy at enemies further away, but having only long ranged fire controls would end far too costly.

Well I would say having one is ok, to gain some intermediate anti-ship capacity. Against missiles its nor really efficient though. At any way, you could easily reduce the other two in range by 50%.

[Bouchart]

Instead of an orbital ship, you might be able to build a gauss PDC on a neighboring moon that you can't colonize.  A gauss cannon on Phobos should be able to protect Mars, at least with a couple of levels of research.