placeing structures around a planet

Manually place them.

If you work out where the enemy is likely to come from you can put defence in front and research etc behind them.

As far as I can see the computer places buldings where it wants with no real eye for strategy or tactics.

Play around with placing buildings yourself you can get some awesome defence going...

thanks for confirming what i thoight i saw it doing. i have looked at where it places defence structures and wondered why there?

if i may add my opinion, i first build a defensive ring around the planet (as close to the planet as possible) aftere that i build an outer ring around the edge of the gravity well, this is all with mass drivers/beam cannons/rocket turrets, after that i build a hangar witth bombers. after that i build enough repair stations to keep everything covered. then if i have enough tactical slots i would build a shield generator and some inhibitors.

Steel...

I build most of the stuff manually but sometimes I just want to place something quickly because I don't want to divert my attention from some action in the game.

I only really do this for non tactical items like Temple of Harmony and on systems that I usually pretty safe due to a stationed army, high defenses in place or just a low risk due to being deep in my empire. For those I'll just click the planet hit the auto place button build the item and unclick the auto place button. This saves me from zooming in to place the structure.

Peace

To add, I also only build defenses around key structures at my choke point world. Why? Well, I want this place to be the target for pirate raids. I don't want to have to jump my fleet all over the place, or sacrifice fleet supply to "guard units" unless I have to. So I purposely place a couple trade ports, a couple broadcast satellites, and a metric buttload of defense platforms around them. When you peg out the system ring (fill the zoomed out ring for system units) with ticks, it looks quite juicy to the AI and they target it more.

vs a player, I don't do...I suck too much to play vs people, and I'm not a min/maxing need to learn "the best strats vs x, y, and z" type of person, and you really need to be that sort of Type A personality to play multi-player, I've found, for any game. Hell, I play Tabula Rasa and Hellgate: London with chat turned off and pretend that all the others are just NPCs. hehe

BUT, vs a player, don't spend too many resources on defensive structures beyond something to delay them enough to get your fleet to them. Players can manipulate or go around them to the point of making them a complete waste of mats to make (this, alone, should tell the devs that they need to be rethought...if a unit is universally "useless" for a whole mode of play, in this case multi-player, then its design needs to be revamped, IMHO).

I like to place my defense structures close to the trade port, or vice versa. I found the pirates tend to attack your trade port and ships. After all, your defense structures basically serve as meat shields, especially when your main fleet is on its way back, it will buy you some time.

this is good info thanks guys - i didn't realize that pirates are attracted to these planets - i usually do a choke point planet and the planet(s) right off it just incase they do try to skip buy or a scout does that. i know when i attack an AI planet that has a big fleet guarding it i do so with a small fleet then after it is engaged send a big fleet right thru it to the next world or even skip another befor asulting. this way i can usuallu take alot before they respond and by that time i have really cut into there $$ supply and in many cases taken out a lot of fig and cap factories as well, which further criples them

No problem.

But, without confirmation from Stardock/Ironclad, let's call it anecdotal evidence rather than true fact. i.e.; every single time I load up a planet with targets of opportunity, pirates attack there to the exclusion of my other areas, even if another is closer. Due to this observed behavior, that's how I build out a planet...to make it a target-rich environment.

So far, it hasn't disappointed, which makes it a great area to train up cap ships.

Of far more intrest to me is whether placing trade posts and factories near the well's edge and/or the jump lane helps the trade/refinery ships be more productive.

i was wondering that as well. also is there a formula for figuring out if extra trdading post are worth building and do the planets with 2 or more posts have to be in an unbroken chain like the regular post to get the benefit if there is one?

Sort of... travel time makes it more efficient. The less time traveled, the more efficient per load they become.