setting up mobile bases safely
- Lieutenant Commander Paul Bonfanti, USS Pennsylvania
Setting up a mobile base in a front line position is always difficult, and failure can mean loss of both a mobile base and a tug. The best way to ensure safety is to stack enough ships with the base to pin out any attackers, but this is not always possible.
The Romulans have a solution to this problem: the FE group. It takes 36 points of directed damage to cripple, much greater than the standard 24 of a tug with the Formation bonus. Stack a good fleet with lots of pin factors with the Freight Eagle group. Pin out some ships, but leave a dense fleet with the tug. After weakening the attackers through approach battles, only a very strong fleet will be able to generate the necessary directed damage.
The FE group also makes a good supply point for the same reasons. The one drawback to this tactic is that the FE takes up three command slots, so you will be doing less damage in return, but the base setup is still your prime objective.
