How do you protect Sphereworlds

The best way is probably to build Weapon Platforms on the Sphereworld. There is a lot of space on a Sphereworld, so it shouldn't be a problem. The reason why I advocate the weapon platforms is because they are considered cargo for a planet, and as such they will stay on the planet and defend it. Very useful for Sphereworlds, since they seem to have problems with ships and other celestial objects.

you could guard the jump holes, or my favorite idea destroy, then rebuild all the the jump holes in a single location, then fill it full of starbases and satalites.
The brass is always greener on the other side.

Weapon platforms!!! Sphere worlds have huge cargo capacity. Just load up with a few dozen Large Weapons Platforms with massive mounts and nothing will get through. But don't forget to put a Point-Defence gun on your WP design or they'll be prone to a heavy drone assault.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

The way point defense works now it can only destroy 1 missile/fighter every 2 seconds max no matter how many guns you have because all the weapons shoot at the same target. Sort of the same problem with guns and missiles - they will all shoot at the same target even though it would only take a few of them to destroy it, and then the rest of the enemy ships waltz on in while all the platforms are reloading. So anything more than a few weapon platforms would be uselessly redundant, and any moderately sized attack force could easily overcome any amount of weapon platform defenses.

PD with 0.5s reload time tends to handle things quite well for the time being. But if you want your PD to work better until they fix the targetting, try modding your componants so they reload at 0.1s and do 1/5 the damage. The faster the reload the better it handles multiple targets (because of less wastage).

Weapon platforms on a whole work very well against normal ships. I've been defending planets with 6-8 WP's against 20+ fleets (balance mod games). Those fleets were only frigates and a lot lower tech than me however.

Your lord and master (below Foamy) LordHavoc

I don't protect them. I build them away from the frontier. Also, if I'm at the tech level to build them and need to worry about protection then I'm doing something wrong.

Sorry about the bump. I saw it in the last viewed section and it caught my eye...

Since there is lots of room on Sphere worlds, load them up with troops and fighters. Swarms of fighter will overwhelm almost any sized assault. You can still have some large weapons platforms for heavy hitting of capital ships, but as a previous poster said, if you have the tech to build sphere worlds and they are in danger, you are doing something wrong. Always defend the integrity of your empires borders!

I can't imagine how slow the game would already be going if I could load up a sphereworld with troops and fighters. I personally found little use for sphereworlds except for showing off. It would take a LOOOOONG time to fill it up with facilities, pop, or anything else useful. Then, what would I do after that? To paraphrase my earlier post, if I actually need a sphereworld then I'm doing something wrong. Also, if I actually need it then I won't be able to load it up either.

BTW, in one game with max random event settings I had the star in a sphereworld go nova. If you think loading up a sphereworld is bad try evacuating one!

I've used the genesis map maker and placed sphere worlds early in the game. Pretty cool, to come upon one.

SEV, more than a feeling.

It would be a great idea to find them in a scenario where ancient races are long gone.

Or meet minor race with sphereworld on galactic junction. (if militia amounts and production/SY rates scaled up enough to make population of SW important)

It would boggle the mind to think of a non-starfaring race building a sphereworld unless you were thinking of one that technologically regressed for some reason.

Yeah
Sphereworlds for Starting Planets
or Ringworlds .. I dont want to be greedy >:D

But honestly I like the Idea of finding such powerfull items in an
ancient galaxy ( and they are mucho mucho more usefull than the massive something weapons )
or letting a neutral race have one

and it will add to the atmosphere of the game
like that one time .. in summer camp .. i finished my sphereworld
and forget to bring a colonizer along .. or the wrong type .. and the next round my dear ally snagged the sphere right from me

So the conclusion is to protect a sphere world you block the warpholes into the system then?
I'm trying this but i've got two problems.
One is that i have a ring world, on the little symbol that shows you that you've colonized it (which can also show if you have a space yard or not), there is an enemy ship. The problem is that when i click on this square it shows me nothing, just my ringworld. I've rotated the screen and it is on this one spot that the ship appears, even if i move my own ships onto that grid there is no combat, so i cannot get rid of this enemy ship. If its cloaked fair enough, but i shouldn't be able to see it then.

Another problem i have is that enemy ships keep appearing out of nowhere near one of my sphere worlds, there are two warp entrances into the system, one i have heavily blocked by a fleet of ships, the other leads to my other systems, all of which have their entrances blocked off. I've controlled the system for about 10 turns now after i had destroyed the nebula and created a sun, at this point there were no enemy ships. But all of a sudden 4 ships just appeared out of nowhere.

Thing is i've noticed that when you destroy a nebula all enemy ships in that system are destroyed, so the system was empty after i had done that, then i closed two warpholes and blocked the rest, yet these ships still keep appearing. Anyone know a way i can actually defend my sphere worlds? Other than WP (sphere worlds have low populations atm so everything is building super slow, also my racial trait is -5 reproduction).

Build a LARGE Freighter elsewhere,
build LARGE WPs elsewhere,
put the WPS on the Freighter and drop them on your Sphere ..

also there is a event that sometimes replace your ships to some random location .. maybe that happened to your annoying little pest.
or the came through your guarded wp cloaked .. do you have decloaking sensors on that fleet ?

if not .. mine that wp .. mines usually blow up everything
( i lost enough cloaked scouts to confirm that ^^ )

I've probably missed the cloaking sensors off.
I've yet to lose a ship to mines

I'd like to see a neutral race start with one so you'd have to work hard to take and keep it. I wonder if the AI would do a good job stocking and defending a sphereworld?

You could also build one and leave it for someone else to capture...

Why on ringworlds do newly built ships start in the middle of the sun? Shouldn't they, well, burn? My problem before of having a invisible ship was because the enemy ship was hiding in the centre of the system's sun!

I believe thats because its where the stellar conversion takes place. They need to designate somewhere for those large, multihex objects.