What do you guys use for fleet compositions?
I tend to do a "pyramid," style. For example, if I have 4 corvettes then I add 2 destroyers and 1 cruiser. But, this is from my numerous hours playing Hearts of Iron 4 so I am not sure if it applies to Stellaris because it is not working. Even when playing as militaristic races, pushing fleet capacity and upgrading my ships with better weapons and add-ons I still cannot win a war.
Any tips?
Each ship class has a class specific tech that helps a lot in battle. You also need to have only 1 of that class to be able to use that tech. For example, i think the cruiser has some sort of battle wide debuff that applies on the enemy, reducing their regen and fire rate. In the Star Trek mod its called "Fleet Battle Bridge" or some shit like that, supposed to be like a battle command center to coordinate the entire fleet.
What i do is just let the computer auto generate the best template for each class. Make 1 of each ship available, i.e. i 1 battleship, 1 cruiser, 1 destroyer, 1 frigate to make sure i get all those ship bonuses, and then normally I stack the fleet with whatever has the best ship value (that point score they assign to every ship) vs. the maintenance, time and cost it takes to build one. So typically my fleet will end up looking thus:
25 frigates (usually the best value to build for a good portion of the game)
2 destroyers (need only 1, have the other as backup)
2 cruisers (need only 1, have the other as backup)
25 battlecruisers (cheap, relatively fast to make, good standoff weapons to pound enemy from a distance - most of your damage will be generated here)
2 battleships (need only 1, have the other as backup)
the engagements are fairly short, and the frigates do a good job keeping the enemy occupied while the rest of your battlecruisers and large ships pound the enemy from afar. AI will continue to engage whatever is nearest them for the most part so they will rarely advance on your large ships until most of the frigates are destroyed. with 25 of them, its not an easy task. and whatever is destroyed is easily replaceable unlike a cruiser that takes 450 days to build. replacing frigates is also much simpler because you can assign 1-2 to every starbase and if you have at least 10 starbases, you're back up to 20 frigates in 60-90 days vs. waiting 450 days on 1 cruiser.