kind of a mix of spam plus combined arms.

i never find it effective to build ONLY one type of ship, but it is often effective to build MOSTLY one type of ship. most of the type the dominant ship in my fleets is an LRM frigate (if TEC or Vasari) or a carrier (if Advent, and sometimes as Vasari as well) or if its late game then mostly heavy cruisers (for any faction). but in any case you need support ships to cover your weaknesses. if you've got a fleet of mostly LRMs you'll have a natural weakness to fighter strikecraft so you'd better cover yourself with Flaks. if you've got a fleet of mostly carriers you'll have a natural weakness to light frigates so you'd better cover yourself with LRMs.

finally, i find that no matter what the bulk of your fleet is its always beneficial to include a couple of special ability cruisers like the various repair cruisers and cruisers that buff or debuff. for any fleet of a decent size what you lose in firepower you WAY more than gain in added performance of your fleet with the support cruisers.

Lately I've become quite fond of fleets composed of 50% Kodiaks, 20% Hoshikos, 20% Pencherons, 10% Flaks and a variety of caps. Add to that a few Cielos to use Designate Target on key opposition ships and you'll have a pretty flexible fleet on your hands that can soak up a lot of damage. This is especially true when facing players that don't really micromanage their units. Earlier today, when playing around to get a feel for the new 1.03 features, I used this fleet composition against a numericallly equal Unfair Vasari AI and managed to destroy 75% of his fleet (at which point he ran) having only lost 3 Kodiaks and a Hoshiko, roughly 4% of my own fleet. But, there's no denying that the best fleet is always the one tailored to take advantage of the enemy fleet's weaknesses. Intelligence is king.

So it is most a mix of spam and balance fleet? So where the line in which a fleet is a spam/balance fleet and balance fleet? From what you said it more of a mix of 3 to 5 different ships in the spam, right?

Thanks for you answer

an example of a typical mid-game Vasari fleet that i've used to good effect

1 Level 6 Evacuator cap ship (the first cap ship I built)
-2 squadrons of fighters
-rank 1 colonize
-rank 1 gravity warhead
-rank 3 nano-disassembler
-Drain Planet super ability
1 Level 4-5 Devastator cap ship (the second cap ship I built)
- 1 squadron of fighters
- rank 3 power surge
- rank 2 disruptive strikes
24x Assailant LRM frigates
6x Sentinel Flak frigates
4x Transporter Carrier cruisers
-4 squadrons of bombers
2x Overseer Support cruiser

as you can see, this fleet is mostly LRM frigates which form the majority of the firepower of the fleet. The Cap ships anchor the fleet and have the primary duty of taking out enemy cap ships. The Sentinels protect your LRMs from fighter squadrons and your cap ships from bomber squadrons, thats almost all they're for. They can be surprisingly useful at attacking enemy LRM frigates though so don't underestimate them. The Carriers provide bomber support which I find to be basically a requirement to efficiently take out orbital structures around a planet. Vasari bombers have extremely high damage in general so they can be considerably useful against almost any target though, particularly enemy cap ships. The Overseers give me an edge in strategic movement making it much easier to find and catch an enemy or detect a superior force coming in and get away in time.

so its technically a mixed fleet, but that doesn't mean it isn't focusd heavily on one type of ship. i think its a good idea to use high damage ships like LRMs or bomber Carriers as the core of your fleet and to build up other units to complement them in battle.

So does any one have a mixed fleet of heavy combat and offensive support Cruisers in there well balanced fleet, or am I the only one.

That is almost exactly my Vasari Mid-game fleet as well. Its right about at this point that I am unstoppable vs. the AI, and get RA anyways, and then, even though my empire is just 1 or 2 planets larger then the AI's at this point, its just a mop up operation from here. Very good fleet core!

I call a fleet of: 1 capship + 50 frigates "Spamming". The above fleet is the perfect example of a 'balanced fleet'. Doesn't mean 'equal # of units' or 'diverse as possible'. Balanced / Combined Arms means that all ships have a role to play in delivering the main firepower to the targets, as this fleet does. It means that you have the most flexibility and fewest vulnerabilities.