fleets guarding a planet

Yep, 2 ways in fact. There's the orbital Fleet manager which let's your ships fight as a fleet useing your logistics, and the Hypierion Fleet Defense which let's all your ships in your shipyard defend your planet

all your ships in your shipyard defend your planet

It would be difficult for ships in your shipyard, i.e. unfinished/unbuilt ships to defend your planet.

Hyperion Shipyard lets you ignore logistics restrictions, so if your logistics normally allows 21 points in a fleet, but you have ships that add up to 26 points in orbit, then all of the ships will defend your planet as if they were a 26-point fleet. With the Orbital Fleet manager your defending fleet cannot be larger than your logistics ability allows. Supposedly. I wonder about this sometimes, however, when I attack some planets.

Wait for 1.2 when your ships acually can defend a planet with very few hit points this will probably reivigarate my intrest in small and tiny hulled ships.

I wish their was a "wonder" for this. I hate wasting space on these defensive things.

You can build a ship basically for defense manily weapons and defenses nothing else build these to protect planets the extra defense should keep it alive for a little longer at least if you have a good weapon structure to back up your defense.

Also as contiuation you may be able to stick engines on these later with the miniturization tech line you know so they aren't so sluggish. I built a ship with 2 arnorian battle armor's on it with only a few railguns and it took my enemy 3 fleets of differnet ships with a multitude of weapons to destroy it.

I build something called an "Orbital Defender" and later, an "Orbital Sentry. (Small and medium Hulls) They have good Defenses and Better Weapons. Nothing else. They are, for want of a better word, Impulse Only ships. (or Hyper Drive) They take forever to move any where but that's not their job.

The 1st thing I build in a Shipyyard is usually a Constructor (low cost - fairly short time). The next thing (assuming I have built a few factories by then) is an Orbital Ship. I make a standard Ship and put one of those huge Space Station Ring Thingies around it. Looks pretty cool and does a good job of defending the planet since the game is so hung up about not allowing planets to defend themselves.

I also have my good Ship producing planets manufacture extra Orbital Defenders and supply them to NEARBY newly colonized planets. Mid-way thru the early colonizing "years" I split my attention between Colonizing and building Defenses so that when war does break out, I have at least 1/2 my planets defended by Orbital Defenders.

I can only hope that sometime in the near future the game will allow some ground based defenses that are better than the jokes we have now.

A 'defensive ship' can only be used on a planet with a starbase, right? Can you send a 'defensive ship' to a non-starbase planet?

There is no restriction to the "Defensive" ship except your own design limits. I don't waste any money on Engines or support so they can't go fast or get far from your area of influence. However, you can use Hop-Scotch tactics to put Defensive Ships on many of your worlds - especially border worlds.

Get a Border World up and running quickly and make it a heavy producer. Start producing Orbital Defenders and then send them out to take up positions around all your nearby worlds. As soon as you get a farther out border planet up to speed do the same and continue your expansion and DEFENSIVE ARMAMENT.

Remember that by DEFENSIVE, we mean something that can't go fast or far but is one heck of a DEFENDING BATTLESHIP. Buying Defenses alone or in great quantity is fairly useless in this game (see an excellent discussion about the limitations of Defense) I usually have my Attack/Defense ratio at about 3/1.

A 'defensive ship' can only be used on a planet with a starbase, right? Can you send a 'defensive ship' to a non-starbase planet?

Build defense ship all the time there is no restriction on them

Best defense ship Titan Destroyer (Hull: Large, Engines: 2 impulse drives, Life Support: Advanced only one Sheilds III: 6 Phasors: 2-4 can't remember This baby is Very useful because it can move!!

i think your missing the point of the "defense" ship . El conquest. Think of it as a heavy armed and armored barge. - if it can move anywhere, its a waste of space that could be used on more guns or armor

This ship the Titan Destroyer, wasn't made for defense exactly i wanted it to be a little faster my better one with more armor and no engines is my Ractor Absorber has 9 on beam attack and 17 on sheilds has nothing else..