Hrm...
I was reading these stories, and I found it queer that the shipyards were terrestrial bound. There various advantages for micro gravity environment for constructing ships, and avoids the tremendous effort to escape a planet gravity well.
As for the thought of shuttles being used to ferry supplies to orbital ships and facilities, this make sense with space ports adding to the time buff for loading and unloading, as they may very well have spare shuttles for this very need. I think this creates a natural progression for space elevators and planetary rings.
The planetary ring could be a joints of owp and shipyards, offering more infratrstrure(sp) for those facilities as such as power, and on hand ammo. It could even add more passive sensor for the planet.
The space elevators would offer a more expedient way to get supply from surface to low orbit.
They both would offer greater tax revenue with private enterprise renting space on the ring and use of the elevator itself, which in game context I see as an upgrade to space port.
Great read so far, I did not see the nuclear war that devastated earth coming, and it made me think of how good of a descion it was to keep the jump points secret, as someone else postulated.
The destruction for these two megascrtures could be very nifty, as to their size would have ecological affects and collateral damage to the planet. Providing a avenues of military stragey as to destroy them or leave them be.