Newbie Question - First Jump Point plans

[Havan_IronOak (OP)]

OK total rookie here.

I'm designing some basic planetary defense before broaching my first jump point.  After watching EnterElysiums Let's Play I'm a bit nervous about it. My plan is to be much less aggressive than he was. I'm thinking of having a jump capable ship at the jump point to facilitate a Geo-Survey ship jumping through. It will take a cursory look around and skedaddle if anything hostile shows up.  But something MAY follow us back through. In that case I'd like to have my preliminary defenses be planetary based.  I have a small colony on Luna and am just starting something on Mars but nothing too substantial yet.

Since it is planetary defense, I'm looking at an Earth based PDC  and am thinking that the active sensor range and the fire control sensors should have a range of about 100 M km.
Obviously Anti-ship missile designs would be tailored to operate in that range as well.
I'm also thinking a layer of anti-missile defense is in order. I'm thinking that the range on that would be 1M km.
Anti-missile missile designs would key for the 1M km range as well.

Preliminary designs for a Hedgehog I PDC call for what I've described above with about 300 ASM's and 1000 AMM's

Of course Mars would get a similar structure at some point as well.
Does that seem like a realistic starting point?

[Pixel1191]

It really depends.  Me personally, I'd like to have at least some warships ready for the defense.  Because if the jump point that the hostiles come through, is out of missile range for your PDCs, you'll have hostile warships roaming around in your system, killing commercial shipping.

But if you don't want to wait too much longer, then PDCs are a good way to go.

[TT]

Havan,

The PDCs will work to defend the colonies but 300 asm and 1000 aams is probably overkill. In your position, I'd spend most of the resources you are going to commit to defense on something more mobile and flexible. Pixel is correct, a fleet allows you to go out and confront invaders and you can cover both Mars and Earth with the same fleet.

You can make a fighter sized scout with a passive sensor and jump drive that is slow but very stealthy and expendable. The passive sensors will identify colonies in the system if you send the scout to each planet and any NPRs probably won't detect you. Make a scout with a passive thermal sensor and another with a passive EM sensor and you should be set.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

personal opinion: it seems fine, and PDCs are cheap.

I would build the PDCs, and put togehter and least an ASM platform for defending the jump point itself.  Jump blindness is a big advantage, and the PDCs will suffer if they are outranged.  You don't need much speed for a jump point 'monitor' design which should let you keep costs down.

Don't go for beam ships for a short term plan, they require a high standard of training but missile ships do not.