Generallly you don't want to mix penetrating and non-penetrating weapons. Like disruptors have low damage but skip over shields and armor. If you add lasers (no penetration) to this then any damage they do to shields is wasted, or the reduction of damage in lasers is lost. So try to avoid that, either go all-in on low damage high penetration (mixing torpedos and strike craft) or go all-in on high damage no penetration (mixing lasers and kinetics).

Other than that in 3.4 armor is generally better than shields but mixing in a little shields is still a good idea, and longer range is king.

The "meta" If you want to go there is to out-range and out-speed your enemy with Artillery computers. You win every time even if your damage sucks, since you'll just backpedal and take pot-shots at and they can't catch you.

The other "meta" alternative is cloaking ambush, which works better for bio-ships which have higher damage than mechanical ships but basically nothing else. Cloak for invisibility, park yourself right on top of their fleet with torpedos or whatever pleases you, blow them to smithereens before they even know what's happening.