They could also have shield bubbles projected from the planet surface like the DS2 shield, the question is firstly if these installations are actually in orbit, or held up by repulsors over a fixed point above a planet. Safety in general would favor higher orbits then lower ones, but a lower orbit over a shielded world would be harder for the enemy to attack.fractalsponge1 wrote:
This is *exactly* how I would design it. I've been mulling over what a fortress system, or at least one valuable enough to really defend in depth, actually looks like. I was thinking shipyard world (lots of onsite fabrication potential, rare enough to be galactic strategic assets) - if the orbital facilities are big enough to be unitary like Kuat they would have their own planetary scale shield (or shields), or if widely distributed in orbit dreadnought-scale shielding on individual facilities (by capacity though perhaps not dissipation).
If you have large scale durasteelmaking you've also got to consider what you can do with a large supply of slag from that. Like sintering it together into giant blocks of fortress armor, like a bullshit form of metal foam armor, sandwiched with normal plates of durasteel armor. That would be one way to give your forts tremendous mass.
I was thinking more like a single big casemated bastion with a caviler on top on a bottom, and a caponier like butt defense position behind it, but I suppose that's also actually a fair bit like how an ISD already looks.1) Literally doubled starfort - one on top, mirrored on the bottom. Big single weapon mount or large weapon cluster top and bottom, with turret batteries layered on the glacis. Symmetrical in z, so can be flipped, or can cover both hemispheres with fire. This would be the semi-mobile system-wide forts - kept in interplanetary space to prevent raids and keep attacking ships from close orbit. Maybe points of a cube format around the main planet. Expansion of the pattern would simply be limited to the resources of the planet.
Any system of large forts should be supported by a system of small detached batteries, which have the added bonus of being much easier to tug around. Forts need reserves and flank guards just like a field force does, it's the static idea of a fort that is it's downfall, they've always required aggressive defense strategies.
2) Half of 1), split by vertical plane - the flat side has repulsor array facing the planet. This would be more of a static gun battery, kept largely in close orbit protection duties.
Low orbit rings are such silly ideas...no doubt you could build one in Star Wars though, and just interspace fortified points with industrial and port uses.For something like Kuat the ring itself would be armed, and collectively the batteries would outgun entire fleets. Which is perfectly reasonable for something approaching Death Star volume and can build entire fleets as a batch order. But systems like that could probably be counted with fingers. Most heavily fortified systems would just have a shield and an array of the forts, plus whatever passes for minefields in SW (I guess cheapo ion weapons with a capacitor attached, or missile tubes).
Yeah, your real proliferation is going to come when you need to defend interplanetary space from constant raids, which could none the less involve very large enemy ships. This would also become a really appealing place for torpedo boat like vessels or dynamite cruiser like concepts, and a FTL capable suicide craft tenders, except employing 100m or larger kamakazi ramships. Use hyperdrive to get anywhere in the system more or less instantly, then launch your ramships into battle to try to actually destroy a major enemy ship, not just fend it off. That would greatly improve the deterrent value of the defense system.
Even for a hugely well shielded planet, mobile forts, turret fields, etc. would be useful to prevent enemy fleets from exploiting interplanetary space as a safe zone, where surface gun batteries suffer from unacceptable lag but planets with predictable orbits can still be hit. The time taken to reduce one of these forts (basically killing a star dreadnought) would be enough time for a world with large amounts of orbital traffic to safely raise a full shield and for defenders closer in to mass to deal with an attacking fleet.
Naturally we need giant fortified pens to store these in so they aren't destroyed by starfighters...
The thing has a no nonsense look to it that I love in utility ships 
