I've been loving the mod dude/lady!
I started with some combat freighters and a salvaged hegemony fleet, running around surveying stuff to build up capital. I later acquired a larger freighter with a flight deck but the game considered it to be a civilian ship, so getting it into combat proved to be more trouble then it was worth.
Shortly before I got my commission with DA I utilized the frigate with the armoured prow, which while effective usually ended up with the enemies bending bullets to hit them in the sides and killing them. Nice ship but not suitable for my needs.
Once I got my commission I moved onto a proper DA fleet with some proper frigates, destroyers and light carriers. The really fast and nimble frigate is a nice ship, with it's duel medium mount I usually armed it with pulse lasers, your scatter cannons or autocannons for some flux cheap ordinance. The DA lasers I found were never good at taking down shields and drove the flux up like mad, so I had to skip them for my fleet. The two destroyers, the err... aggressive one that like a larger version of the frigate and the longer one that has the 8 small missile mounts were nice. The aggressive looking one worked well with two glowtusk guns and a medium PD, complimented with a full row of DA's heat-seeking mini-torpedos and I used them all the way until the late game. The longer ones I had to put away before they got themselves killed later on, although I had intended to arm them with PD missile launchers I could never find enough so I mostly stuck to the heatseeking torpedoes and gave them scatter cannons. They served well enough as escorts for most of the game but were easy prey in the larger conflicts so I had to retire them. The light carriers, variant of the Chinook freighters if I recall, served me well all game, simple carriers with two slots for wanzers and a medium slot for keeping enemy ships at bay. I only ever lost these ships when their escorts let them actively die.
Speaking of wanzers, I really love em! The frost escort wanzers were on all of my carriers as their loadouts for cost were great for almost anything. I usually pared them with the minigun wanzers, which look fantastic by the way. Both made for great strike craft up until the end game. I also got to try the single big wanzer with the cannon arms, that big betty could take out cruisers on her own! Amazing. I did also give the transforming interceptor wanzer a go, good in it's own right but I preferred the cheaper frosts. The sniper wanzers never really struck a cord with me compared to the others, so I used the minigunner wanzers instead. Same with the artillery wanzers as they just seemed to be torpedo bombers so I stayed with the big heffer as It seemed much cooler.
Once I got my reputation to cooperative I purchased a battlecarrier and 6 cruisers, as they were all badly needed considering the beehive I kicked in the hegemony. The battlecarrier is nice, carrying three wanzers and looked great but that said it does have a nasty habit of trying to actually fight. Thank the lord for savescumming as I have lost the same carrier six times due to trying to tank battleships, crazy blighters, but I know that's more the game's AI then your mod so no worries. One of my six cruisers was a light cruiser and I have to say that it's one of my favourites. Armed with it's built in artillery laser and armed with a glowtusk turret and supported by it's own wing of frost wanzers there ain't nothing that little guy can't do! Great all round ship that never pushed it's self too far. The other cruisers were the DA standard cruiser with he four medium fixed mounts. A nice addition when facing enemy cruisers, I struggled to arm hem how I wanted for a long time and even then the available OP points made it hard to come up with a build. Most of the time they were armed with four pulse lasers and two reaper torpedo launchers which seemed to work well enough. I constantly found my self wishing for more flux when they get shot at but otherwise they did their roles as I would have expected of them.
I eventually ran into a bounty target that had their own DA fleet and managed to salvage a battlecruiser from the ruins. The big old micro-missile spewing beast this ship did alright against most targets. It's triple compliment of glowtusks and the siege laser turret did most of the work with the micro-missiles mostly acting as a distraction to the inevitable fighter ball. It did fairly well against it's targets and was defensible enough against enemy battleships that my wanzers and cruisers could surround for the kill. It could solo eagles and legions, so I can't ask for more then that really.
As I built up a considerable amount of war loot from my personal war with the hegemony I soon decided to buy a dreadnought, another battlecruiser and I even salvaged another battlecarrier and light cruiser in my travels. The dreadnought is a nice ship with it's triple wanzer compliment and four large slots. I only managed to find another two siege lasers for the ship so I had to resort to the large scatter cannons which while nice had poor effect at long range. The dreadnought was where I suddenly encountered the main problem I have with this fleet. It's cost to deploy. Not the supply cost, heavens no I stole thousands from the hegemony, the actual deployment cost.
As my war with the hegemony heated up and they deployed larger and larger fleets, even with the electronic warfare range debuff I was getting due to my level build, I found myself unable to match their numbers with my own. Even counting the deployment number debuff from being heavily outnumbered. So I would frequently encounter battles where at most I could deploy a third of my fleet when the enemy could deploy three quarters of theirs. One dreadnought, two battlecruisers and two battlecarriers vs the world. It was never enough when being hit by dozens of frigates, destroyers, cruisers and a couple battleships from all sides.
I'm not asking or whatever for you to change this either, as DA have an elite fleet that isn't really cut out for the constant bloody war like the standard starsector ships are, like the hegemonies are. But yeah, when it comes to a full fleet on fleet battle the DA haven't got a hope in hell to beat the cheaper and more numerical hegemony in open war, I can see it from my own attempt at it. Kinetic weapons rule right now, range is king and numbers mean more.
If that says more about my current opinion of starsector or your mod is hard to say, but it has been fun to use. I can't wait to blow the crap out of some DA fleet on another save file! Maybe the ORA fleet even if the AI can ever learn how to use their fleet properly without pulling my hair out!