You never send in your strongest forces to the front line! They are used as a contingency most of the time. Think if all U.S. Carriers were destroyed in a battle. Do you think the war would be won?
That is wrong... you use the big one (tm) as important tactical asset. This means deploy them in a very sensible way, and don't go high risks. This does not mean, stay away from the front line. But when you deploy them at the front line (eg, a battleship in WW2) you deploy them not alone and independent of others, but in concert with all the other ships. When the big one goes forward, all the smaller ones move with it, because it is the center of gravity. You don't deploy the big ones at some random point in the front line, but where the big ones get deployed, you suddenly will have the most critical section of the front line and pull all other units to reinforce it. (How to do it wrong, see Operation Rheinübung)
Of course, this must happen surprising for the enemy, so you usually don't move all the small ships with the big one, like those small fish around a shark. The big one is somewhere at the distance, assisting maybe from second row and is only important because it exists. The enemy will wait for a chance to unexist it (as you see in the EVE example). And suddenly, and in a way that only experts will notice this from the incomplete knowledge of the battlefield (you have no god view in real combat), the motions change subtile in a slow dance, and suddenly, the big one is forward, slicing through the units of the enemy at a weak spot and all the smaller ships assist.
And of course, if you are caught like that, you do the only possible way: Retreat and regroup. It is better to give up space, than to give up important units or time. Space can be won again, smaller units can be rebuild, but the big ones are hard to replace in a war. And lost time never comes back.