Re: Advice on protecting unarmed ships
 

I am fairly sure I with 1.84 that I had two fleets arrive at a location the same day and the one without mine sweapers arrived first and was toasted. I believe the fleets moving on the same day move in the order they were created. Renaming the fleet will not make it newer and creating a new one will cost you your training bonus, if any.

I usually avoid trying to coordinate attacks with two fleets, as many things can go wrong (such as a rogue enemy ship can bLast one ships engines before it dies, putting your fleet's movement cycle out of synch with the other fleet).

I usually make all my ships armed, even ones that break formation with Don't get hurt, just so they cannot be targeted as Unarmed.

Meson Cannon I is nice cheap, 20KT weapon to turn support ships into armed support ships.

If you are going for armed support ships, I would recommend that you consider 'weakest' to pick them off.

I am not sure if PDCs make a ship classified as armed. With only PDC a ship will be treated as unarmed with respect to breaking formation and running to the corner.