The Defense Station is one of the least used 'game changers' in the game. There is so many ways to win with one it is crazy. First rule in most of this is set up a means to rotate leaders. There should be three potential leaders and each should be able to change the vote to themselves to be leader. The best is 4 for the leader (each secondary voting for him) and 3 for both secondaries.

Now then a Defense Station can be used in defense or in offense. It can be sent to an empty system with 1 planet owned by family, or to a system with 70% of the planets currently explored owned by family. Yes in SD you can send a DS to a family's home system as well if you explore/capture 12 planets in an 8 player fams home system. Evil huh?

A DS sent to a system is slow... normal speed only. This is a disadvantage when trying to move it fast but an advantage if you drop under 25% ownershipof a system.

A DS can be redirected from a system it was headed to, unlike fleets. This is very useful and will be discussed further.

Now a DS is commonly placed in a system with a major attacker who if wise tests each system til he finds it. Little thought it put at where to put it other than a mostly yours system. Then it gets left there.

Bad idea.

Imagine a set of three systems with majority ownership. All adjacent to eachother. The attacker finds the ds in system one. Now move it to another system! Watch him lose 30%!! Move it again! Keep moving. Those three systems will cost him fleet and morale.

But thats lowbrow compared to what you can do. Find a banker who lasers up huge and has most of a system. Send full fleets to take him out of the system and take it. Meanwhile your DS was moving to a location passing through the system. Move it to the system and start portalling and lasering even more. Oh the pain they will take trying to retake...watch for enough fleet to be made to actually kick you out...send ds away and recall fleets. Or if portalled finally...jumpcounter fleets... pwned. Combine this with a banker raid where your plan to dominate one system he filled and put th biggest hit fleets there... double pwned!

Now how do you plan a DS movement like that? Well sparky the answer is you have to take 70% in other systems and start it moving.Redirectas needed.Plan the systems you will have a super majority ownership of and when you need to. Combine this with swap outs (oops for exploring your core, so sorry) and the likes.

Then there is the slow base of death. Make a system full up yours and portal. Move the DS there. Take stuff 4 ticks away and send DS there. Or two ticks. Portal successfully. Keep moving forward with it only partially secured (aka not 100% portalled) systems and keep watching portal smashes suck ass.

Napped with everyoneand huge cash stashes? Op your pop bankers down hard and dropfleetsand you can buya second on the cheap.

A Defense Station is valuable so dont put to much risk on it, but dont be afraid to use it to kick ass. It can change the odds quite easily.