Help with Specialty Weapons (Particle Beams/Plasma Carronades/Ect.)

[Theodidactus (OP)]

I guess I'm still a little unsure how to put stuff in orbit and around jump points. My plan was to have a "starbase" for each of my fleets, which would contain command and control facilities as well as tons of those mammajamma-sized laser systems. Also luxury passenger accommodations, for the aristocracy to hold deep space tactical conferences from the comfort of their own personal solarium.


Is the idea to build a PDC on earth and then have it towed to a location? Is there any way to make it follow a planet but be outside the atmsophere?
Can anything tow anything?

[Hawkeye]

Oops, my post above regarded beam weapons. Missiles are not affected by atmosphere.

Just to make this clear (I have also edited my post).

As for starbases:

They are just ships without engines and will stay in orbit over the planet they are build.
The only way to move them is with tugs (ships with a tractor beam). You select the target they should pull from a drop-down on the individual ship screen (F6, I think), miscelaneous tab.

PDCs are _not_ movable, after being build (they are supposed to be deep underground (think cheyenne mountain) but can be pre-constructed in parts. Those parts can be transported to the planet/moon/asteroid you want them to be and assembled there (some factory capacity, either actual factories or engineer brigades, _and_ some minerals are needed for this). After assembling them, they can not be moved again, just like a regular PDC