One could say the same thing about castles but they still have value. You can't get to targets near them without coming under their influence.
Castles were also built in strategic locations (i.e. at the mouth of a valley, along a trade route, etc). In space the strategic locations are the Pirate points, and maybe the Jump Zones. Anything else is open plains, where both sides can see each other, but stay out of archery distance. You can't park a space station within weapons range to defend the spaceport or capital, as if the Space station is low enough to provide protection its orbit is not the same as the planet's rotation and it will pass on by. If you park the space station so it is geostationary, it will be too far out to provide direct weapons fire.
A Castle can send out troops to engage enemies at a distance, but has an advantage in that if attacked it can take multiple hits without popping.
Current Space station rules are like saying you can only mount an amount of armor proportional to how fast the unit can go. Since Space Stations cannot go anywhere easily, that limits their SI and armor. With those limitations they are not castles, they are more like a town with its walls made of flat sheets of wood leaning up against buildings. Cheap? Yes. Easy to set up? Yes. Lots of storage capacity to survive a siege? Yes. Great for putting a bunch of cavalry inside to deal with attackers? Yes. Useful if it gets attacked by enemies? No
I don't know why the SI Rules for Warships couldn't be used. That would allow more armor on Battlestations. As for the rest. I have no idea how you'd implement that. One item and the whole section can't be armored? It'd be better to just have those items damaged on a hit to that location, armor or no.
Apologies, I meant that if you have a Repair Bay, the Bay cannot be armored, but the station attached to it can be. You are exactly right. External items get damaged on hits, internal items don't (until the armor fails)
This I wouldn't agree with. Larger greater ranged weapons, sure. Just doubling the range of existing weapons? Not so much. I can see a bonus to strike since the station is stationary but that's a double edged sword.
Yeah, I was making an idea where if you put together 4 NL-55, you get the damage of a single NL-55 at double range. Forgot about that detail, sorry.
Satellites can get up to 300 tons now but I agree that there should be something between 300 and 2000 tons.
I'd like to have the option for space station and satellite sizes ranging from 1 ton to 2.5 MT. You can't really mount anything on a Space station of 1 ton, but it would allow for future rules expansion. A satellite massing 2.5 MTons can mount a lot, but the amount of time needed for external maintenance means it will be spending a lot of time in a Repair Bay.
That could be a useful difference:
Space Station: free-floating orbital structure that is capable of performing self-maintenance or even repair using parts provided from internal storage
Satellite: free-floating orbital structure that is not capable of performing self-maintenance or self-repair (cheaper per ton)
So a satellite could have a Repair Bay attached to itself, but it can only repair items within the Repair Bay, not itself. A Space station could use repair materials to patch holes in its own structure.
You could even have a manned satellite, but when that satellite needs repairs, it has to be picked up by someone else to have the repairs done (though humans can be very creative when it comes to wanting to stay alive).
I suppose you could build a 'Space Station' that is one ton and use fractional math to put in structure and the rest as cargo, then drop off life support for the person in the cargo bay. Strap some solar film on the outside to power a flashing light/radio beacon, and leave the poor person in there for 10 days all by themselves. No windows, and assuming .25 density, that is only 4 cubic meters of volume, or a sphere just under 2 meters wide on the outside. So 10 days with no windows, no proper bathroom, no gravity, unable to stand up straight, and no way to talk to anyone else. Solitary confinement away from everyone