How does fleet combat work?

[OrigamiPhoenix]

I've mostly been flailing around, using the auto-complete to make my life easier, and practically only switching out the attachment and range slots.
I feel like I'm missing some nuance that to ship & fleet design that the game doesn't bother to explain.

Is accuracy affected by distance? Will weapons fire at all from outside of their range?
Is the game racist against armor for a reason?
When do I ever want to use 100% pen weapons?
What's a good weapon balance for titans with their massive firing cooldown? Is there some upper limit on the number of titans you can have, or in one fleet?
What starbase buildings and modules are good? When do things like the hyperlane registrar make sense to use?
What's a good fleet balance between ship types? If it depends on your circumstances, when and why?

Thanks in advance!

 

[FonVegen]

1. No.
2. What? Armor costs more alloys and doesn't regenerate, but also doesn't draw energy from the reactors.
   
3. When your opponent is very heavy on armor/shields and you want to bypass it.
4. One titan plus one per 200 naval cap.
5. Crew Quarters wherever you station your fleets, Fleet Academies for shipyards, Naval Logistics Offices for anchorage focussed stations, Command Centers are good for bastions, as is a Defense Station Supercomputer especially for the one with the Strategic Coordination Center (because why not pile up all the ion cannons just for fun?), and wherever you don't have anything to build: Resource Silo. As modules are concerned: Six anchorages are still my way to go for increasing naval cap, then add trade hubs and gun batteries/hangar bays as needed.
6. The more corvettes and small ships you have the better you can protect trade routes (so make a fleet of 20 corvettes just to patrol if you don't want to build stations that protect trade). Otherwise my way to go is to roughly keep a 1:2:4:8 ratio, which I never quite maintain but try to roughly adhere to. A maximum of one titan per fleet for me.

That's my personal thing, though I never play competitively, so I might get it completely wrong. It works for me though.

 

[Nakkivene]

1, Far as I know, no on both counts.
2, Huh? You're limited in your amount of shields by power, and several weapons such as Giga Cannons and Autocannons mess shields.
3, Against fallen empires and the contingency mostly, specifically arc emitter and cloud lightning. Possibly against late-game player battleship fleets, idk. Disruptors kinda suck due to low range and damage.
4, The perdition beam has a good chance of just blowing past something's shields or oneshotting a target entirely. I like Neutron Launchers against 50/50 defense splits as they have more damage to the totality of enemy defense than Kinetic Artillery. Your Titan cap scales to your empire size with some formula, but you can mash as many as you like to a single fleet.
5, You mean which defense modules? Hangar Bays give the best trade protection, guns I think are the best for actually fighting. All the ship aura things will help you fight an enemy coming in the system with your own fleet. I've never used hyperlane registrator for anything though.
6. Mostly monoship. I'd stick to Battleships once acquired if you're unsure, as they tend to not die a lot.

 

[Kryndude]

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/a2yvr9/22_ship_configuration_meta_predictions/

This thread was particularly helpful to me. I think it'll be too for you.

 

[OrigamiPhoenix]

What? Armor costs more alloys and doesn't regenerate, but also doesn't draw energy from the reactors.

Huh? You're limited in your amount of shields by power, and several weapons such as Giga Cannons and Autocannons mess shields.

The auto-complete loves energy weapons. Which is weird because I can't remember a single time that an enemy's ship had more armor than shields. (Besides for the Scourge and certain leviathans.)

https://www.reddit.com/r/Stellaris/comments/a2yvr9/22_ship_configuration_meta_predictions/
This thread was particularly helpful to me. I think it'll be too for you.

Thanks, this is actually really in-depth.

So, follow-up question: Hangars? Do they target missiles? Are they really as bad as people say they are?

 

[Nakkivene]

They don't, and yes they are. I just had a battle where I had a battleship design with different weapons to see the damage output.

The Tachyon Lance, after beating shields, did 40k damage to shields, missing half the time, and 30k to hull.
The Neutron Launcher did similar to the Tachyon Lance, but less as it's a smaller weapon.
The 2x point-defense turrets, hitting 60% of the time, did 1k damage to armor, and 6k to hull.
The 2x Strikecraft did all of 2.7k to armor, and just 270 to hull.

Same levels of repeating tech.

I don't know what it is, but I'm not impressed by Strikecraft at all.