How do you decide where to place your ships during peacetime?

Peace-time?  This is an alien concept to the Kzinti!   They should be placed somewhere convenient for the next war you will launch...

Sentient species taste better...

but even during times of war, are you generally better off placing your fleets on your starbases or orbiting your planets? or neither? 

also: do you play with a mod that has races from "Federation Space" and/or "Federation and Empire"? I use to really like both of those games and I'm reminded of how much I enjoyed them when I see the word Kzinti. 

In time of war and peace (no pun) I place fleets on a perimerer around the part of the galaxy I have/attacking.  It's basic military tactics.  If you've played war games, follow your instinct.  I don't use military starbases (for attack or defense) if thats what you meant.  If you mean protecting military resource starbases, by all means.

@KP...witty.

I usually start my games in a state of war with all races.  My fighters immediatley attend to perimeter guard if not invading.  I build them as big and heavly armed as I can.  My transports are light and fast with no weapons so they hang behind my fighters.  I believe defending planets with ships in orbit is futile.  It's best to stay on the offensive and intercept transports before they even get within sensor range of your planets.  The AI doesn't understand the concept of blitzkrieg.  They typically don't come at you with everything they have or even a considerable portion of what they have.  They always go for the slow grind which can be easily thwarted by a strong perimeter.

Hmmm. Strong perimeters are subject to penetration/exploitation (although I'm not sure the computer opponents are that smart--they seem kind of slow). I suggest a few very strong fleets at (interior) strategic locations, and use of interior lines. It's (barely) working for me in my first game--so far. I keep a small force (e.g., two heavy fighters) at strategic points on the perimeter to discourage cherry picking unguarded planets (usually all of them, except for ships in repair, fleets abuilding, reserves, etc.). Leaving ships in orbit is a waste of maintenance fees--they should be out hunting hostiles, picking off mines, patrolling, generally keeping the aborigines off balance.

Early game, and at least up to the point where you have decent engines/weapons/shields and plantary invasion techs, isn't it better to keeps your ships in orbit where they get a bonus to their ratings, which boosts your overall military rating, deterring the AI from attacking you?

Early on the ships are so slow and impotent, there seems little point in going to war with anyone, so my military vessels have no engines; they just sit parked in orbit. Once I have medium hulls and engine techs, then (to me) it seems much more practical to make ships with a balance between speed and firepower that you can start hitting starbases/trade routes with.

Well, it's all relative.  If the enemy is coming at you with small hulls and a couple weapons points, you can beat them with small hulls and a few more weapons points.  The AI fights with small hulls for a while.  They don't come at you right away with the heavy stuff.

It's true that you get a weapons bonus for planets in orbit, but unless you're playing with a very small number of habitable planets, it's generally not efficient to build ships just to park them in orbit.  You have to build so many, you have no resources left for offense.  The game ends up in a stale mate or slow grind at best.  Of course, the game can be played any way you like and if a long drawn out game is what you enjoy, then go for it.  I like my games short and they usually don't last more than a few years.

I was going to mention a perimeter defense would be useless against another human player because perimeters can be overrun, but in this game we play against the computer and perimeters work in that case.  Although, I have been overrun by the computer before, but it's pretty rare.

Early on I'm just looking to have enough of a military rating to bluff the AI into not trying to extort me or seeing me as vunerable enough to attack; 2 or 3 "quality" ships in the orbits of 2 or 3 planets is usually enough to to earn the AI's grudging respect, but no way is it worth doing it for every planet. Building ships without engines maximises the space for weapons, and therefore your rating.

The only times I've been attacked early on is when I have ignored my military in favor of economy/trade/research. Even a rating of one-half or even one-third of the strongest AI seems to prevent them attacking on that basis alone, giving time to build decent ships and larger fleets, and picking the moment to go to war rather than being forced into it.

Early on I think you do get maximum value having military ships in orbit, once you have progressed to medium hulls and reasonable weapons, defence and engines then they have to be out n about protecting your interests or causing harm to the AI's

Keep in mind how the "Neutral Space" UP Treaty can affect you.  That is, any ships in what becomes enemy space will get teleported to a boundary.  The only exception appears to be ships in orbit around a planet, even if that planet is "behind enemy lines". 

This, in turn, means that defenders set to "Guard" at mining starbases will also be thrown out of enemy space.  (And even bases with lots of modules lose most battles.)  In one game, I had three mining starbases close together far from any planets but in another empire's space.  I knew I would lose them at the outbreak of hostilities, so I built and upgraded an Influence starbase in the middle to create a small pocket of friendly space to park the defenders.

In another case, I had just two starbases close together but they were both red bases that I wanted greatly to protect.  They were too close to future-enemy planets to have any hope that i could build an Influence base to include them.  What I did may have been a bit cheesy, but I built a base at the border and added enough mil starbases with speed boosters to let me get my defenders on station instantly upon war declaration.  Just in case the AI bagged the bases in a surprise Pearl Harbor (The Drengi have done that once or twice to me), I had some constructors there, also.

The starbase speed-boost cluster around the major fleet rendezvous is a known device, of course.  It is strongest in smaller galaxies, obviously, where one might be able to completely conquer any enemy on the opening war turn, but it can be useful even in the largest galaxies.

Me I place my ships on border worlds around possible enemy empires.  That way I don't have to look at them. LOL.

If I have Eyes of the Universe I usually don't have to worry about sneak attacks because the trillions of transports and starbases usually open up my space for I don't miss anything.

If I feel that something is about to happen then I will place the fleets right on the borders of influence with the nation that I think is about to start something, wathcing thier space with eyes of the universe too.

Yea, military rating makes all the difference.  If you get it high enough, you can pretty much control the game.  Building the spin control center and putting some ships loaded with weapons in orbit around it is key.  I rely on that project heavily.

Definitely, I often try to set it up so I can take out an enemy in one turn, Just load up a bunch of transports and fighters to hit 'em all at once.  The game developers tried to counter this tactic by slowing ships speeds from DL to DA-TA, but it's still pretty do-able with the right setup.

Well, IIRC, in DA each base can give +2 and there is a limit of 4 bases per quadrant.  Putting the rendezvous nexus near a corner allows 4 quadrants, each with 4 bases, each with +2 gives a total of +32 for a one-time boost.  With good miniaturization, 3000 invaders can be made fairly cheaply to have 11 or 12 speed.  Higher is possible, of course, but the invasion transports are one-use disposables, so mine usually end up at 11 or 12.

You can extend the range slightly by planet dancing (enter orbit on one side and exit the on another w/o cost), but the practical limit seems to be about 50 spaces.  (Also, micro-managing 100-200+ ships along such a dance path is a real pain)  In practice, that give you 3 full quadrants.  In the largest galaxies, that is useful, but not an Empire snuffer unless perhaps one builds that great nexus almost at some precisely calculated point along the right border edge.

Still, it's fun, though the last bases can get expensive.