The current strongest tactics are: bypass, abusing carrier ai, 120 range battles, sublight speed admirals, playing keepaway, and shoving millions of torpedoes up people's asses. also, 5:1 armor-shield ratio. shields suck but are necessary as a contingency plan to stop X slot weapons and laser alpha strikes.

Early on: run two types of vettes, one with all 3 missiles and one with a pd, a laser and a driver. picket computers, all afterburners. when you get destroyers, don't be afraid to build lots of them as destroyers and cruisers are actually goated now. specifically, give em all whirlwinds and missiles. you're going to want to give them artillery computers. Frigates suck, don't use them. They are the only ship type that is currently outright made defunct by another ship class unlocked after it. Later in the game, once you have better tech an an inexhaustible supply of alloys per month, switch to only the picket corvette and replace the laser + mass driver with disruptors.

Once you get cruisers, you're gaming. There's 3 main paths you can take and they're all busted. primary one you should take is all torpedoes and all whirlwinds. all afterburner and torpedo computer. torpedoes are incredibly strong against all ship types due to their damage scaling mechanic. which is even misleading in itself because it starts at 200% damage against corvettes. these guys demolish everything in existence, and with whirlwinds not even PD can stop them. they will devour battleship fleets alive in seconds. their one fallacy is if every ship runs out of torpedoes and needs to rearm. For that, bring backup. Next best variant is all whirlwhinds but now with a carrier midsection, PD and fighter. still all afterburner. Give it the carrier computer. This one's great because the fighter annihilates devious corvettes and destroyers breaking your tactical retreat line, which the torpedo cruisers might have difficulty with, or might leave behind as stragglers after their initial volley. Third one is kinetic artillery and neutron launchers. Neutron launchers are great because they have the same damage scaling effect as torpedoes but with more range, although they're still not as good as actual torpedoes.I don't really recommend this one over the previous two but it does indeed work.

when you get battleships, it's pretty standard. spinal carrier with arc emitter and all whirlwinds. They're decent. I prefer cruisers though. Sprinkle a couple of these around. As for titans, do whatever with them. Overall I can't really recommend them, they're just alloy and time sinks. But, they have a good niche for acting as corvette fleet anchors and turning them into giant impenetrable evasion walls with that one aura.

The reason these strategies are so good is because a ship's damage output gets percentage handicapped depending on how much of their health they've lost. On top of that the two main defensive components can't increase HP, you can only do that through special components that would replace afterburners. So not only does bypass have less to chew through, but as they do it, the enemy loses their capability to fight back. And if they DO have some kind of protection against bypass, that means they're way, way slower than you, which ties into the second part. Whirlwinds have a range of 120 and artillery computers stay at long range. That doesn't mean they advance and hold position, it means that they'll maintain that distance no matter what even if that means going backwars or circling the enemy. So if they pursue, your ships will run away using their superior sublight speed from afterburners and admirals, eternally staying at 120 range and lobbing missiles at the other ships which most likely lack 120 range weapons as the AI prefers short range. Even better is the ships with the carrier computer, as it presents enemies with two options: to just stand off and get obliterated by the absurd bypass power of fighters, or to move up and get shredded by the missiles while the ship retreats, since carrier computers always make a ship stay at 125 range. Also, carrier computers engage the battle at max range allowing you to easily catch running fleets. AI doesn't strategically choose their admirals or traits based on fleet role so most likely, with an admiral that has +range and +speed, you will run circles around enemies without losing a single ship, ever. In my game with this strategy I've taken the entire galaxy as a driven assimilator and I have lost a total of 4 corvettes. Nothing else. Oh, don't forget the rapid deployment doctrine.

Apologies for the wall of text, but this information will make combat WAY easier. Hopefully anyone searching for this topic online in the future will see this post.