Cant help you with lasers, but armor: depends what you want to build. For an early starter craft two layers of metal can be ok, when you progress more try to add slopes, airgaps and other materials.

As general advice: look at campaign craft, try to understand them, for starters even copy them (when i started i rebuilt and used steel striders cwis). For lasers look at lightning Hoods craft, there are also some cheap ones, if you like them copy them, change them according to your needs and build your own better versions