Deployment time for stations

[Atlantia (OP)]

It's been well over a year since I last played, and deployment time is totally new to me. I tend to make stationary sorium harvesters, and then move them around with tugs. What am I to do with the deployment time for these stations? Is there a way to simulate moving just the crew (shuffling in and out), or will I have to town the station back toward Sol now and then?

[Haji]

If deployment time is exceeded, all that happens is lowered morale of the crew. The morale however, does not affect commercial ships in any way that I know of. As such I always have most commercial ships, like freighters or fuel harvesters, on three months of deployment time, despite the fact that they almost never go back to the colonies.
For military ships it's a different matter, as it affects a lot of things such as targeting. Deployment time does not rise if a ship is above a colony with some people on it (10k is the minimum I think). As far as I know geological and gravitational survey sensors are affected by morale, so if a survey craft has exceeded it's deployment time, it will survey slower.
If you exceeded your deployment time, all you have to do is to send your ship to a planet with a population and wait.

[Barkhorn]

Also worth noting is that the longer you take before giving them shore leave, the longer their shore leave will take.

[Wolfius]

If deployment time is exceeded, all that happens is lowered morale of the crew. The morale however, does not affect commercial ships in any way that I know of. As such I always have most commercial ships, like freighters or fuel harvesters, on three months of deployment time, despite the fact that they almost never go back to the colonies.

Doesn't it affect response time if an enemy is in the same system?

Sure, not going to matter most of the time, but could be important for a support ship like a fleet tanker or troop ship.

Personally I like to give ships apropriate deployment times. The Reclaimer-class migration ship, for example, has a 500 month deployment time - they were built to colonise the A-component of my home system in my current game.

[Atlantia (OP)]

To continue my question, what do I do about, say, jump gate defence platforms?

[Black]

You will have to tow them to colony sometimes. You have to do that for overhaul as well.

[Wolfius]

You can also smply set their deployment time to something like 1200 months and just accept the extra tonnage, if the platform if out there for a century you probably want to replace it anyway.

Still have to tow it back for overhauls, as said, atleast unless you've turned those off.