So I've not played the game for very long, especially compared to some people here I'm sure. I think I've gotten a pretty decent grasp of how to play the game, etc etc. Just went from a 'vanilla-ish' modset, that had a radar, lights, sounds, spinning rotary thingies, to 30 mods with lots of ship packs, Nex, Varya's sector, etc. I've yet to start a campaign with all of these mods, but I've been enjoying the arcade mode from a shippack I forgot the name of, was fun!
Onto the question
In my vanilla run I tended to get squashed pretty often until I started running a carrier heavy fleet, 4 midline fast carriers with 6 midline destroyers, excuse me whilst I casually forget their names, but they were the ones that had the maneuvering thrusters and laughed at any smaller frigates that tried to catch them.
At the start of every battle I'd assign a destroyer to a carrier, then up to 4 fighter strike orders, depending on the situation. I, myself was in a midline battlecruiser, the one meant for broadsides, with hellfire cannons and hypervelocity drivers, and tac lasers.
This fleet setup pretty much melts anything I've come across so far, granted that run never met the spooky redacted at it's strongest, nor fought several paragons, but big scav/pirate fleets that I was scared of now were running away at the sight of the carrier fleet after them.
One thing I thought about was the setup of the fighters and bombers themselves, I had 2 out of 4 carriers assigned an officer with lvl 3 in all carrier skills, these carriers had bomber heavy loadouts with swarm interceptors with flare launchers. The ones that didn't have officers had swarm drones, purely to get more numbers on the field, as the skills help damage and survivability of the fighter/bombers and the bombers needed them the most.
It's also noteworthy that with every deployment, I would max out ECM at 25% enemy range reduction (often vs 0%). My flagship had a ECM package and I had skills that enabled 1-5% increase per ship, often leading to something like ~43% vs 0% when I deployed every ship in my fleet (I had in my fleet smaller phase frigates, and others to round out my composition, but I never had any issues with just deploying my carriers and destroyers)
So was it just pure luck that I stumbled across a good fleet setup? Or in vanilla, do carriers with good LPCs make/break a fleet? Love to hear the thoughts of the long playing guys.
It's also noteworthy that until that point, I would actively avoid combat as I found it the least enjoyable experience, now I love it a lot!