New player struggling

[Gryphin]

Yes do keep fleets stratiegicaly placed. I guess I should have said build as few ships as possible.
mac makes some good points.
Here is my view of Space Stations at warp points;
Note: I hate a static defence so the following should be taken with that in mind.
1) Major investment that must be protected and can't be moved when you expand.
2) They take a lot of time to build so you will need a fleet there to protect the Ship Yard Ships
3) If you play tactical combat a Satellite carrier backed by a small ship can be very effective. The Satellite carrier can dispence the sats in smaller Groups so you can select your targets. I have actualy put "walls" of sats in front of my missle ships. The ship acts as bait to get the AI to come through the sats. The sats can inflict a lot of pain before the AI reaches the ship. This type of defence can expand as your empire expands. When deploying sats in tacticle put the older ones out in front to get chewed up first.
This defence will not work well in stratiegic mode.