- Bases and minefields can only be used in Defensive scenarios (unless a Minelayer is carrying mines, at which point they are deployed like flights).
- Bases are treated like ships and they can even serve as a task force flagship. This replicates Babylon 5 and Deep Space Nine commanding a fleet in battle.
- Bases and minefields start at formation level 0, which allows for free directed damage, because they are immobile and cannot maneuver
- Minefields do not have a command cost and do not count against a task force's command limit. The number of minefields present in the battle is instead equal to the number of ships (1:1 protection)
Does that all sound reasonable, or are there any other elements that we should consider? Minefields become throwaway defenses that, while powerful, have limited usefulness in space combat scenarios and are more useful as strategic weapons to prevent an enemy from pushing deeper into your space (as each minefield counts as a ship for the purposes of contested movement).
Bases meanwhile become overgrown (+50% CP) ships that are more powerful but can only be used in Defensive scenarios. They're great command linchpins in those kinds of defensive fleet actions, however, and allow the defender to field a pretty substantial warfleet.
The question does become whether there should be a limit to the number of bases that can be included in the task force at once. Something similar to the one-third rule may be necessary, so that a player has to have some ships (if available) in the task force and not use cheap bases to completely shield them.
This could be a pain point for the single squadron task force rules, as dealing with assaults against systems with high CR starbases could become one-sided meat grinders unless the attacker also has a solid command ship. Then again, historically players have built very few fixed defenses, preferring to rely on mobile fleet units, and if you encounter a single large starbase here or there it shouldn't be too unbalanced. The attacker is just going to suffer much higher attrition from having a "narrower" battle line.