I really don't see a problem with that. There's a lot more involved here than just creating some hoops that people can carry with them to have portable Aegides, and it's the kind of thing that would get a whole covenant marched very quickly.
Write out a definition of T: Boundary which does this precisely - and still keeps the "thing" moveable!
So I'm probably in the minority opinion, but i think that neither boundaries nor circle spells should be movable, and that to move the circle/boundary ends the spell.
I realise this makes the mobile covenant much more of a problem.
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Thant's an unnecessary exercise in futility. After all, the "thing" can be "that ship". Ships, after all, have a very clear boundary.
That depends on precise definition. If a ship with a hole can have an Aegis incorporating another tower, then a flying castle with a big outer keep can also incorporate another covenant. And just how heavy need the wall of the outer keep to be? Just like a fence?
Getting a covenant marched is always an argument when looking up such exploits - but its just a cop out.
I wouldn't have a problem with that ruling. I just think the mobile Aegis is less of a problem than it's made out to be.
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Which currently does not appear in the definition of T: Boundary (ArM5 p.113). You have to put it in there: your interpretation alone does not reach the readers.
If players want to go to all that trouble - let them. They could just as easily rip up a mountain and fling it at the wizard's tower smashing it to pieces which most definitely is possible within the rules.
I would just remind any players looking to do that kind of thing that if they can do it, then so can their enemies - and with that in mind, do they really want to use such tactics?
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I think the easiest way to deal with all of these issues is to say that a boundary must remain fixed relative to a surface which is at least twice the diameter of the boundary. The if you set up your covenant on a floating island it can move with the island but cannot reach the edges of the island, similarly with a castle in a cloud. if you want an aegis in a ship it will have to be a freaking huge ship (and the whole ship could be otherwise enchanted) but you won't be able to simply land the ship in another aegis to take it out, because the other aegis will keep your flying ship away before it reaches that point.
So cop out again!
The real problem with the Aegis of assault is, that it can be landed on an adventure site, there protect the magi (and grogs with tokens) from about any supernatural attacks, plus weaken the site's defenses and inhabitants there against the attacks of the magi.
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What's the problem with that? If they managed to pull off such a decades-long, vis-devouring project, it was with the Storyguide's full knowledge and cooperation. The troupe apparently finds that kind of thing fun, so let them do it. If the rules don't allow it, they'll just house rule things so it can happen. If the Storyguide really doesn't want them to make such a thing, he or she has plenty of perfectly valid tools to slow down and/or scupper the whole project.
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It would have to be a pretty big ship (or whatever) to cover all the site's defenses and inhabitants - and if it is that big it would have a pretty good chance of landing on and destroying whatever the magi were interested in finding in that site.
Experienced magi can do a lot of things that are nearly impossible to defend against. An Aegis of assault is probably not even at the top of that list.
You're not alone. I agree perfectly.
I consider this to be a feature, not a problem.
The traditional covenant is stationary, not mobile. This is not because a mobile covenant is impossible - or even very hard - to create with Hermetic magic. Immobile Boundaries (and other containers) would solve this.
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You set up your covenant near a village. There is likely no well defined visible path circling the area to use for this so do you spend a year telling your grogs to follow a path or do you have them set up marker stones around the area you want your aegis?
The Aegis of assault to be used on adventuring sites costs per year the same Vis as your covenant Aegis, if you use it every year. The rest of the costs is one time and for trickyness: getting the fence or such light and spacious enough, getting it moblie enough and investing into the element of surprise.
Most of this can be researched as spells, some can be enchanted into the fence.
I strongly prefer ErikT interpretation here. You can Circle ward something and it can be moved so long as the entire contents it is protecting move with it.
The questions become:
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How high does the circle ward extend up? I have always imagined a hemisphere that extends to include the height of whatever is in it when cast, plus some leeway, but I dont think that is defined.
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How low do circle wards extend down if their base is moving? I assume to the bottom of the base, plus some leeway.
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How do mobile wards interact? Aegis of the Hearth encountering one another is one thing to consider. Another is this - imagine a human is trapped inside a mobile Corpus circle ward. That mobile Copus Circle Ward jail is passing through a LARGER Corpus Circle Ward designed to keep humans out. Does the poor prisoner get smashed to death on the walls of the ward? Do the two conflicting wards compete for supremacy and he gets pushed through the weaker?
No. Wards cannot exert force. You can't force someone to move by moving a ward around them in the first place, so the particular example is invalid, but in any case if two conflicted the weaker (lower Pen or lower level, probably lower Pen) would give way without any ill effect on the warded person or object.
Let me try to generalize and summarize OneShot's "Aegis of Assault" (hereafter AoA) objection, before answering to it in a separate post Please, OneShot, I may be misinterpreting what you have in mind, so feel free to correct me.
A somewhat munchkinish troupe (like my own!) might think of neutralizing opposition in an area by taking the following three steps:
a) Create a "lightweight" wall delimiting a Container (in the ArM5 technical terminology); I'll call it a fence, but other solutions are possible. If the fence is circular, the area within the fence is technically T:Circle, probably T:Room (I mean, it's a courtyard), and also T:Boundary.
b) In a place of strength and power, pre-cast Container-Attached spells advantageous to the magi's side, and/or harmful to the opposition, on the Container. A "Container-Attached" effect is essentially what David Chart defined as Type 2, affecting, throughout the duration, any valid target in the Container for as long as it remains in the Container. The obvious example would be an Aegis, but many others are possible - say a ReAn spell to make giant-bees-of-doom catatonic, so you can steal their honey.
c) move, as quickly as possible the fence to the attack site, so that the effect comes to encompass the opposition. Note that for this to happen, you really need a "hollow" fence - the strategy does not work if you have a flying castle or ship protected by an Aegis, because it cannot "engulf" the opposition (I guess the flying castle could just land on those too slow to move away, but then in most cases the Aegis would not be their most pressing problem 
)
Before proceeding, let me point out a crucial issue. This is not something specific to mobile Aegis/wards, nor to T:Boundary. It is something specific to persistent effects attached to "engulfiing" Containers (in fact, wards are difficult to use offensively in this way, by their very "keep out" nature).
To understand if - as OneShot seems to suggest - the AoA is game-breaking, we have to ask answer two fundamental questions (from which, I believe, many additional insights can come about Containers):
- What would it take for it to work, in theory and in practice?
- What advantages would it provide to magi over other strategies?
Ok. Would the AoA work, in theory and in practice?
The first thing to note, is that this strategy has poor aesthetics, regardless of whether it can work by the RAW. It's a little like casting a CrTe spell to bury a distant target under a big mound of dirt ... at R:Touch, by having the big mound "connected" to the magus by a oh-so-thin trail of dust that makes up a negligible amount of the dirt so created, but keeps the entire thing in touch with the magus (you see what I meant with "a somewhat munchkin troupe like my own"...).
The fundamental, if a bit fuzzy idea of container-attached spells is that they are immobile relative to their immediate environment. So if your immediate environment is a ship, an attached Aegis should be immobile relative to the ship. Now, a simple way to define an immediate environment is to look for a clear perimeter -- the circumference of a Circle, the walls of a T:Room, the boundary of a T:Boundary. The fact that all "area" spells in ArM5 are defined in this way is one of the things I love of the game.
The problem arises if the local perimeter is well-represented by a very lightweight, non-essential fence. The crux is that the fence represents the perimeter, and perhaps symbolically reinforces it, but is not the perimeter. That fence should not drag the effect with itself if moved, because the quintessential "local environment" is not moving. This is the essence of Samsaptaka's argument, and what ErikT's proposal is trying to capture, and silveroak's (the boundary should be attached to something twice its size) too. Personally, I doubt there is a clear, rigorous solution, any more than there is to one about the issue of "how far up does a circle go". I think that the common intuition is fairly strong here, and it's ok to highlight the problem, provide a few examples, and let the troupe adjudicate the inevitable borderline cases.
Let me stress that this includes cases where the main Container is mostly immobile.
Consider for example a (moatless) castle, and its corresponding T.Boundary (this is highly relevant to adjudicating Haunt of the Living Ghost). The Boundary should get all the way to, and encompass, the castle walls. If one of walls is breached, is the T:Boundary destroyed? Nah, I'd say it stays more or less where the wall was, and where the traces of it still are. What if a small portion of the wall is torn down, and rebuilt slightly outward (say, to encompass a spring?) or inward (to avoid some collapsing terrain)? This is a little bit trickier, but I think that the Boundary would adjust to the new wall. However, if a significant portion of the walls is torn down, and the castle is rebuilt on twice the previous area, I'd rule that the Boundary has been destroyed - there's a new Boundary in its place. If a massive spell grabs the entire motte on which the castle is built, and moves it two miles to the south, the Boundary of the castle moves with the castle walls.
Last but not least, let me stress that the issue is not really just about Container spells. It's about the ship of Theseus: informally, if I cast a T:Ind, D:Year spell on a ship (not as a Container but as an Individual!) and over the first half of the year I replace one at a time, all the sails, oars, planks and other parts of the ship, does the spell still work in the second half? What if I replace them with somewhat different sails, oars etc.? What if I really alter the design of the ship?
In the same way, does moving a physical element that represents the perimeter of a T:Boundary, T:Structure, T:Room, or T:Circle, count as moving the T:Boundary, T:Structure, T:Room, or T:Circle? There are cases in which the answer is clearly yes, and others in which it is clearly no ... and obviously cases where it's somewhere in the middle and requires adjudication. I think that most troupes would say that if you fence a part of a forest, cast The Shrouded Glen on it, and then teleport the fence twenty miles south into a different part of the forest, the spell does not move with the fence; it may stay where it is, or it may just go poof, depending on whether the initial portion of the forest was or was not sufficiently "demarcated" on its own without the fence, and thus whether the initial T:Boundary is, or is not destroyed, by removing the fence. Note that this issue far more general than the movable Aegis, but I think that if you resolve it, the movable Aegis is solved too.
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This is exactly what I was getting at in my first post on this matter. The boundary is intrinsic to the area that is affected by the spell. Moving the representation of the boundary does not move the area that is affected by the spell.
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