Is there a tactical role for orbit-denial killsats?

Killsat is certainly cheaper and easier to maintain than warships, since they are stationary, does not require much fuel and is close to the supply line (The planet it's currently protecting).

The problem was, just like static defense in real life, they are inflexible and to protect an entire planet, you probably need more than just a few stations.

But it will still make it a pain in the ass for invading fleet to attack.

So no, they don't have tactical use. They have strategic use.

Oddly enough, we don't see much of them in game for...some reasons.

Yes there likely would be, but I would recommend a different approach. Just store your laser drone fleet in orbit around tactically significant targets and use them when required (they already have the power, and laser). You could even build a focusing array of extra optics to take in each individual beam and reflect / focus it into a single powerful beam capable of much much larger intensities (and thus longer range) than a single laser could create. The laser drones themselves could provide the pumping by firing into the focusing array. This would also help avoid the problem of creating a really large costly slow moving target for KKVs.

It could stop scenarios like the mission Force Projection where you have one ship sent out just to be annoying. There's a minimum defence level one must maintain so the enemy can't get away with silly things.

I would build killsats with *some* mobility; you're already paying for ludicrous laser energy, why not an MPD when you're not firing your death beam?

And they'd be defended by a small drone constellation.

childrenofadeadearth.boards.net/post/8778/thread

At 17 miligees, you're not dodging missiles at close range, but with such ludicrous beam output (and intensity) you could pop the attacking carrier at potentially light seconds.

kitten

The Killsat as-posted cannot survive accelerations (assuming we're taking structural properties into account which COADE does not) above a few dozen milligees. It's laser power is sufficiently high that it can kill anything other than a large heavy (and thus laser-resistant) projectile at high speed, but such a projectile should be detectable from a significant distance, and thus dodgeable even with milligee acceleration.

My god. It took days of arguing to get Shurugal to accept stealth is extremely difficult to achieve in space, especially with the industrial infrastructure necessary to fly around with multikiloton spacecraft.

(See this thread which our debate dragged extremely off topic. Please read all of it before continuing this arguement, since multiple highly intelligent individuals wrote pages of well-reasoned thoughts.)

The acceleration burn of a high speed heavy projectile can be detected from extreme distance, defense can be accomplished against normal missiles (high thrust) by catastrophic damage to internal components utilizing giant death laser, vs impractically armored missiles (basically artifical asteroids) defense can be accomplished by dodging.

The weakness of a static laser station is that it is always possible to throw a sufficiently massive object at it that it cannot kill the missile before it collides. Even 17mg of acceleration is sufficient to remove this obstacle.

Did... you even read the thread? Literally every argument you've just made has been said before on it...

This is the first time my feelings about a particular person on this forum went beyond 'irritation'.