Tanker

this strategy does not work with any race probably, except against the AI
TEC probably have the most simple start in that regard since they get easier access to income increasing structures than the other races and get more "buffs" for survivability and repair drone upgrades.

Remember that any human player would just ignore your frontline defense and rush through if he wants to attack you.

This strategy would actually work at choke points.

My advice: Boom to capture around 5 planets and "build it up and stay there for a while" at your border planets. Make lots of defenses there.

FrickenMoron, you're correct that this strategy is limited. It requires "ideally" a single choke point.

Tanker, I think your strategy would work well so long as you were able to acquire enough (4-5) planets and build enough (3+ hangers and 4+ turrets) defenses at the choke points. Also, you will need to scout your enemies fleet constantly to be sure you knew from which angles he could attack... you'll need to keep your fleet positioned to counter his attack. I think this strategy would work great with vasari dark fleet in much larger maps or ffas where people hold back before they attack. In smaller 1v1 type games, this is fine so long as the goal is to improve economy for the purpose of massing heavy cruiser type ships. Additionally, turtling is great vs. pirates. With this strategy, you can let the pirates attack you and eat up experience for your cap ship. If you can get your cap ship to lv 6+ before your main battle fleet engages your opponents, you could potentially slaughter him with the right timing of cap ship deployment etc. Again though, limited. In small games it is typically better to blindly mass LRMs and rush with them (this tends not to work if your opponent knows what to expect though, not good vs. experienced players).

since pahse jump inhibitors are useless, you cant turtle. Thats it. Not possible. Enemy will run right past you.
If hes vasari you wont EVER catch him, one enforcer can slow your entire fleet if it gets a good shot and the marauder will happly boost his speed beyond wtf.

So no, tanking wont get you far. Kept for AI games, you can basicly do anything and get away with it.

You can turtle. You just turtle around your important planets and not every out of the way asteroid that just happens to be closer to the border.