orbital defences

[coco146 (OP)]

I am planning on building some orbital defence stations, the only weapons that were researched were particle beams and gauss cannons.  I want to build several simple stations with only a few particle beams, but should I give those stations anti-misile capabilty?  Or should that be on seperate facility?

[Traveler]

If you already have the missiles, launchers, mags and FC designed, why not include them with the beam PD on the same PDC?

[coco146 (OP)]

Sorry I was talking about using gauss fot pd the particle beams are purely anti-ship, and as for having then on PDCs doesn't that reduce their effectiveness?

[Conscript Gary]

Correct, beam weapons and atmospheres do not get along with the exception of mesons.
I personally wouldn't bother with an anti-ship beam orbital base unless you expect to have to take out ships sitting literally on top of your world, and once you've reached that point you have other problems.

[madpraxis]

Ok, are you building orbital defense stations or are you building PDC's? Because you seem to be swapping those two terms around like they mean the same thing.
Something in orbit wouldn't have any limitations on it's weapons.
Something in a PDC does, unless you are building it on a zero atmosphere body, since the more atmosphere you have, the more interference you get.
A orbital defense station would be a engine-less (at least in my mind) space station with lots of pew pew's on it.
A PDC is a large armoured base dug into the ground of whatever body it is built (or assembled) on.

[coco146 (OP)]

So PDCs armed with misiles better for defence?

[orfeusz]

It depends but generally YES.

They have bonus to armor and better firing rate for missile launchers.

[Shaitan]

It depends but generally YES.

They have bonus to armor and better firing rate for missile launchers.

Note that the better firing rate for missile launchers requires PDC specific missile launchers to be researched.