I am thinking of instead of building regular lame-old jump gates building a jump tender fortress, you know... getting a orbital habitat, sticking huge amounts of lasers on it (say 30 quad turrets or something like that) a couple hundred shields lots of maintenence suplies and engineering space.Orbital habitats only work if you are in orbit of a system body right? I think what you want instead is the recreation module, which will give shore leave to the mounting station and any other ships on the same point. By "a couple hundred shields", I hope you mean hundreds of shield modules rather than shield points. You will want at least a few thousand shield points for a big fortress, especially if you think you might not be able to finish off the enemy fleet before jump blindness wears off.
As I recollect, civilians can be designed with their own Jump Drives, and that they can use the jump drives of anything sitting on a point.The new version of civilian ships design themselves based on your tech levels. I may be wrong but I also believe that civilian ships will only route through permanent jump gates, so while they can technically traverse using a jump drive in practice they won't visit colonies without permanent connections.
And I've seen NPRs use the squadron jump to land quite a distance away, so decent sensors would be smart.Oh yes, I guess it depends on your definition of decent sensors. Of course if they squadron jump that far away then plasma and HPMs on a station aren't going to be much use.
Also the shielding is probably for when so many NPR ships jump through, you can't kill all of them before they reactivate. Also, they can move while jump blind, just not see or shoot.This is actually a rather interesting question (to which I don't know the answer). If I'm guaranteed the first shot (or several shots) then that clearly shifts the offense to defense balance, but how much?
I am thinking of instead of building regular lame-old jump gates building a jump tender fortress, you know... getting a orbital habitat, sticking huge amounts of lasers on it (say 30 quad turrets or something like that) a couple hundred shields lots of maintenence suplies and engineering space.i am also thinking about putting huge fast armored missiles on it. Also good sensors... Any designs code to this? Maybe someone to tall me out of my madness?Build a civilian station that supports free floating weapons platforms. That saves a lot, trust me. And the best weapons for JP defense is a combo of plasma and HPMs.
Civilian ships only use actual jump gates, so if you ever want your shipping lines to go through that jump point you'll need to build an old fashioned gate and have this as a jump point fortress along side.As I recollect, civilians can be designed with their own Jump Drives, and that they can use the jump drives of anything sitting on a point. And I've seen NPRs use the squadron jump to land quite a distance away, so decent sensors would be smart. Also the shielding is probably for when so many NPR ships jump through, you can't kill all of them before they reactivate. Also, they can move while jump blind, just not see or shoot.
Why do you need good sensors and shields if this is just about jump gate defence though? That's all about doing maximum damage in the minimum time before their sensors come back on line. Surely you just need enough basic sensors to cover the area around the gate and as many plasma cannonades/meson cannons/short range box-launchers as you can fit?
I am thinking of instead of building regular lame-old jump gates building a jump tender fortress, you know... getting a orbital habitat, sticking huge amounts of lasers on it (say 30 quad turrets or something like that) a couple hundred shields lots of maintenence suplies and engineering space.i am also thinking about putting huge fast armored missiles on it. Also good sensors... Any designs code to this? Maybe someone to tall me out of my madness?Civilian ships only use actual jump gates, so if you ever want your shipping lines to go through that jump point you'll need to build an old fashioned gate and have this as a jump point fortress along side.
