Hey! I just had what I thought was a really cool idea. It's relatively radical, but oh well. What if planets had stuff like jammers and all, but for defense, they had a planetary fleet. I've decided to write a new story not based on the game, and this occured to me to use in the story for how wars are waged, and then I thought it would be cool if the game did this. The player could purchase multiple, single, or no defense ships for their planet. They can't leave the planet, but when the planet is invaded there is a very small chance the EWD away. Those ships are where the techs like beams, shields, fighters, torps and all go. Cloak, jammers, and sensors would be overall I guess, but each ship could have different technological levels. Then the attacker would have to fight off these ships (and by destroying them he could get a chunk of their value just like normal attacking) and then take the planet. Oooh, and this could be a research and build thing too... to increase the technological capacity of those defense ships. That would make sense. Then, the could take up a certain amount of space in the hulls of a main ship, and if large enough, the main ship could be used to transport them from one planet to another. That way, defenses could be moved from one planet to another as priorities changed! I think this would be great! Please take the time to read and comment on this (unlike some of my other posts) cause I think this is a really cool idea.

Oh, or they could be like sattelites. That would make sense. Planetary ships or sattelites... I like sattelites better, but it wouldn't really change anything either way.

Oh, another thing. This would give you an excuse to use armor in planetary attacks. I never understood how a planet could have ARMOR that had to be destroyed... it just doesn't make sense. These defense sattlites could have armor though, and they would have to be destroyed.

Actually, it does make perfect sense. The planet doesn't have armor. The armor is on the BASE that must be defeated in order to conquer the planet, probably the bases defense fortifications, specifically.

A minor point to be sure, but hey, when you're writing stories it might be useful to understand the "planetary" armor concept clearly.

I still like the idea of sattelites and mobile defenses, incorporated with research and build. It would just expand that aspect of the game a bit.