This is my mostly end game fleet of a second vanilla play through.
I tried to avoid high tech on this play through. In my last run I leaned pretty heavily on tempests, and had to use a distraction Paragon and nuisance Doom on some of the story fights. So for this run I wanted to try to keep it mostly mid and low tech. Just pretend that you don't see that one high tech brawler slotted in amongst the rest.
I like the XIV Onslaughts and Eagles to a fault, and had to build a fleet around them.
This fleet can take on medium sized Ordos of around 300 DP made up of mostly Alphas with fairly minimal losses of a frigate or two, an usually a destroyer or cruiser. It can also 'handle' 400 DP sized Ordos with 'acceptable' losses of about 50% percent.
My general plan is: Two Eagles and two Gryphons escort the Onslaught, while four Brawlers Falcon (P) and a Hammerhead go around capping points and spreading the enemies out. Sometimes more hammerheads, sometimes more brawlers.
Most ships apart from the Onslaught get unstable injectors for the added speed. I found that range doesn't matter much against Remnants or the Doritos, and its more important that the ships are fast enough to cycle out and share the shield tanking load. Honestly though it barely does the trick for cruisers, they'll often get pinned against each other with the opposing ship using the victim as a shield from the rest.
The Eagles are pretty gimped when in the escort role, they tend not to face targets all the time and are often out of position, but when facing Remnants they are too slow free roam, and the Onslaught can't effectively retreat when pushed, so the Eagles are slaved to the Onslaught. The Gryphons provide much needed long range finishing capability.
This approach is pretty hit and miss against Remnants. You have to try to stay away from Radiants for as long as possible and destroy the stragglers, but it's not optimal to have 124 DP worth of heavy ships fail to make themselves felt. It's also easy to misjudge where the Radiants are headed and accidentally get caught in a head to head slugging match with the main core of the enemy. It is manageable, but its also up to chance whether a slowish cruiser gets pinned and destroyed in a few seconds. It is however, the right kind of difficult and doable for me that I don't need to make anything more optimal
The Onslaught is a very solid damage dealer, generally doing 40 - 50 % of the damage in a given battle when player piloted. The thermal pulse cannons are very flux efficient, and if you set them to auto fire and select a different weapon group then each gun will individually fire when it (has a chance) of hitting the target. You can point the ship either side of the target and send two long pulses from each gun mostly independently. It ends up being pretty effective at sniping destroyers frigates and even fighters. The four HVDs add some solid additional flux pressure.
I was running four Annihilator rocket pods, which are pretty effective at finishing off ships getting in close, and they do a reasonable job of distracting Ziggurat motes or other incoming ordinance. However for taking on Remnants I found that the sabots were more effective at getting them fluxed out which is pretty key to surviving their aggressive pushes.
The Onslaught can fairly comfortably solo a Radiant so long as their isn't too much pressure from other redacted ships. You mostly have to use the burn drive to keep up with it and keep it maxed on flux. The alternative is to let it vent and come back in for another pass or two, but there is the risk that it will pop a destroyer or light cruiser on its way back in.
The Eagles are, okay like this.
Otherwise, when facing more conventional mid and low tech enemies and equipped with 2 HVDs and 1 Heavy Mauler and whatever else, they are phenomenal. I'll let 2-3 of them free roam. If you have enough map control from frigates and other fast ships then the Eagles ability to efficiently trade flux at long range will allow them to corral the AI into a ball at the edge of the map and prod them until they run out of reinforcements.
Such built Eagles fail hard however, when faced with aggressive, relatively high flux output opponents like Brilliants which push in close and win the damage race pretty convincingly.
I tried SO Eagles with Heavy Machine Guns and Heavy Blasters, which are fine, but I suspect that unless you go all in on aggressive ships then you don't maximize their potential. With just 2 or so aggressive short ranges ships then they have the risk of not having an opportunity to push in, and end up burning through half their PPT doing nothing, or when they are close they don't always have the local superiority to win the fight convincingly.
Swapping the HVD's for Heavy Auto Cannons gives them more kinetic damage output at a higher efficiency, and I found that they can go toe to toe with Brilliants now, depending on the build, but it's not as pretty as I like. I also have long range spec officers piloting these, which, is not optimal for how they're currently employed.
The Gryphons are a surprise hit for me. I was running a conquest with twin hurricanes, but conquests are brain dead when escorting other ships. They fail to present their guns to targets pushing in close all too often, and big capitals don't cycle tank very effectively. Also against Remnant you can't let anything with a speed less than 90 or so free roam, at some point it's going to get jumped and any ship not in the main pack has to fend for itself, so there wasn't really a place where a conquest could fit. Even though Gryphons have pretty terrible flux stats, the unstable injector gives them a speed of around 80-90, so when fighting within the main pack they can get back to safety before taking too much damage.
Gryphons with expanded racks, missile spec pilots, and the auto forge can potentially shoot 60 Hurricanes during the battle for a total of 120 between the two of them. Since this fleet is a pretty slow burn, having the deep pool of missiles is critical.
One surprising thing I found out today, is that Harpoons launched from an ECCM equipped ship are really really good at tracking and destroying Dorito fighters, they are fast enough and more than maneuverable enough to get something close to a 80% hit rate, and each hit pops a fighter.
The Falcon (P) probably needs no description. If the AI realized that it could pop frigates and destroyers in seconds with the one two punch of sabots and harpoons then it would be the most OP ship in the game. Unfortunately it tends to hoard its missiles so doesn't have a consistent impact.
Hammerheads with built in mods are really good. Again with unstable injectors for added speed and integrated targeting to offset the range penalty, they can cycle in and out of engagements repeatedly. The accelerated ammo feeder allows them to make the most of their short engagements.
Previously I was trying them out as line support ships trying to maximize their range, but I found that they often got squeezed out the front or out the back of the line, causing them to be dead, or useless. I think they work much better as a relatively fast skirmisher. They tend to stick around for a long time, and their damage output is very respectable.
Brawlers are a really good fit for this fleet. They are really survivable, at lot more so than my tempests were. With a Heavy Needler and a Heavy Mauler they can put a lot of pressure on destroyers and frigates. However they aren't really fast enough to hunt frigates effectively, and while they can potentially gang up on heavier targets with their solid firepower. They strafe too much to hit consistently, and often bump into each other spoiling their shooting even further. They also have a horrible tendency to stand back and wait too often. Where faster shorter range frigates will stay close to the target and readily move in for sustained shooting, Brawlers equipped with mid or long range weapons will often hang back a whole screens width of distance away from the target, and then when they do get close they will only get in close when there is a massive local overmatch of forces. Short range frigates don't seem to care about local overmatch anywhere near as much. But they do survive for a long time which is their main strength.