I believe this tactic is rather well known (or not), but I find that the best use of those fragile Starships (the initial ones, not the flagship) is to position them in the right place, then surround them with turrets. You should be able to stick 50+ small turrets or 30+ larger turrets at x2 damages coeff around them. This save you money but perhaps more importantly it saves you turrets slots.
Another advantage is that you can defend 3 nearby worlds in time for a raid very efficiently with that. Just have the 1-2 starships move into position to the soon to be attacked planet, and position it at the center of your prepared turret ring. And voila, your 30 turrets are worth 60. So a starship is somehow able to 'move your turrets', as you can double the firepower of them dynamically!