so you've decided to build your own fleet. whether you have a specific vision, saw a cool fleet in the battlespace, or just thought that Battleship hull looks cool, there's quite a few important things about fleet construction that aren't talked about much in game.

1. watch Build boat Better by Vastol, it covers a lot of the basic game mechanics and explains a good amount of stuff, and the rest of this guide is gonna assume that you've watched it.

2. build your fleet, and especially your ships with a specific purpose and play style. you can do "gapfill" fleets that are designed to provide a multitude of roles to support multiple teammates in their own tasks however these fleets absolutely need to be different ships in the different roles, as multirole ships tend to end up confused and not good enough at either of their intended roles to be worth the de-specialization.

as for what common roles exist in neb here is a(by no means comprehensive) of common roles i see succeeding in the field.

Frontline: almost every team needs a big ship or two to sling some 450 shells downrange. just remember, you're a shore bombardment platform, and don tend to do well in close.

caps or dad fleets: neb is a game about capturing objective points so a fleet with fast, stealthy and cheap ships to sneak those cap points and exploit vulnerable back line fleets, as well as using cost-effective CQB assets to act as landmines to deny capture points is very important

raiders: for the lovers of maneuver warfare, raiding fleets usually use 250mm, 100/120mm and plasma to smash any unsupported or out-of-position enemy fleet. high risk, high reward playstyle, as the best ships for damage output are often fragile.

missile spam/carriers: both direct fire and "yub"(hiding behind rocks and way-pointing missiles into the baddies) can be vital in breaking stalemates, saving an ally in a bad position, or taking down vulnerable assets

I've ordered these in roughly the order of easiest to toughest fleets to use as a new player, though i'm not gonna stop you if you wanna jump in starting with a carrier or missile fleet, and you can still make easy-use missile spam or cap fleets.

There's a lot of components in the nebulous Fleet editor, and many of them are good, but a lot of em(especially the modules) are either niche or outright bad. here i'll explain the what and why of modules mounts and compartments, and especially why you wouldn't want to bring certain ones

Mounts
pretty much all weapons and PD systems: great and wonderful, just make sure you put the largest things you can for the slot size. a mk66 may be cheaper than a mk68, but loosing a whole barrel of fire from a capital ship wont be worth it, for example.

the exceptions here are the sarissa and aurora on ANS: they're both very powerful, especially the sarissa, however they don't tend to work well on capital ships due to their extreme power draw and fleet-defense focused role making them just as good on offsets, scouts, or escorts, so its generally best to offload any sarissas to your scouts to let their long range sweep the battlespace for unwary fighters or missiles, and auroras to your escort to use their hit scan attack to thin out decoys and more maneuverable threats.

EWAR systems, everything from jammers to OSP's long range directional sensors are(almost) universally great, but there's a couple exceptions here: the masquerade deception module and the hangup jammer. the masquerade probably has a use case, but my 4500 hours in this game(man i need a life) I still haven't found it. as for the hangup, you can get use out of it with 3-4, but to do so you usually also need a couple blanket radar jammers on-target, and at that point your investment in support systems starts looking a little too high to be worth it.


compartments
really there's not much to say here, most compartments are great. remember intel center wont provide additional benefits beyond the 1st one, and that magazines, CICs and the OSP's damage control complex have compounding costs, so doing more than 2 mags or more than a single DC complex is not recommended, beyond that, don't run plant control centers unless you cant fit a single extra micro reactor and still have power issues, and lets move onto modules.


modules
(excluding radars for now)
now we get to the fun stuff, modules can often make or break a fleet, and bad module decisions can easily make or break a fleet.

weapon buff modules(ammo elevators, rapid-cycle cradles, focused particle accelerators, and energy regulators) these are all excellent modules that massively improve your game impact. remember that these stack with diminishing returns, so you usually want about 4, although its common to see as many as seven in some battleship or heavy cruiser builds, as redundancy here can make you much more of a threat even in the late game or after receiving heavy damage. for OSP, almost all of your guns benefit from rapid cradles as well as ammo elevators, and the best ratios are about 50/50 with a preference for the ammo elevators, I.E. most of my line ship builds run 2 rapid cradles and 3 ammovators. for plasma, the turrets massive clip means they really prefer rapid cradles. the plasma casemates, however, focus on a sustained fire, so you want energy regulators for them. as for beams, the focussed particle accelerator is king. energy regs help, but due to the battleshort mechanic as well as the damage model, the particle accelerators will kick ass, while the energy regs really only work for buffing rail guns.
actively cooled amplifiers can be very useful on specialist jamming escorts, but i cant recommend them anywhere else.
missile prog busses and arrays are of course very useful to missile builds, but not useful anywhere else(antimissile-missiles dont use program channels and pop out instantly)

fire suppression systems and redundant reactor failsafes are nice to have on capital ships, but anything smaller wont have anywhere near the debuff related issues to need them.

as for the radar related buff modules, the adaptive radar reciever significantly upps your ability to find small targets, its excelent on long range search radars like the spyglass, Early Warning, or even the paralax.
track correlators have exactly two use cases:the OSP bloodhound needs at least 2 of these to produce firable tracks, and the ANS spyglass radar outfitted with 4 of these also lets you orbitally bombard your enemies with long range accurate fire.
the supplementary radio amplifiers are again useful in exactly one place: torpedo ocellos(torpcellos) which use them to help break through command jamming when going on their attack runs
scriers are useful on scout ships to help determine incoming missiles, I'm not a super big fan but they can be vital to newer players who dont have the muscle memory to do all the soft kill measures quickly


everything else? awful!
reinforced thruster nozzles? unless you have 3 raiders FLANK wont damage your thrusters enough to notice
strobe correlators don't give you position or velocity info, so even if that line-of-bearing was perfectly accurate, you'll still miss because you cant calculate lead
signature scramblers fall under the masquerade issue of "i can still tell what you are by what you're doing" but don't even have the false info to screw with things.

if you've already decided on a specific fleet idea or composition, than heres my advice! skip around to the fleet you're working on, and be enlightened. if you don't see your idea here, that doesn't mean its bad, just that i don't have any specific ideas for it

FRONTLINE
beyond the buff module information from the last section the most important thing about frontlineing is bow-tanking and orbit-dodging, both of which use the fact that axfords, ocellos, vauxhauls, and solomons have narrow front-on profiles and sloped armor to mitigate damage. In-game, this means moving erratically(using the orbit command in the movement menu) to dodge and running bow-in gives you the best chances of living through a fight, so how can we use this in fleet editor? the most important thing is putting a bunch of durable compartments in a big slab in the front of your ship, usually a combination of auxiliary steerings, reinforced or citadel CICs, and/or reinforced DC lockers. by placing them together in a group, you maximize the chances that damage gets split around, so your damage control can repair things fast and easy.


CRUISE MISSILE SPAM
the mixed salvo planner is your friend. hitting the little green "+" next to any of your missiles in-game starts the process, and mixing your missiles has numerous benefits, as it allows you to get the benefits of certain penaid modules(the green ones) without paying for them on each and every missile in a salvo(this is especially true with the various self-screening jammer and decoy modules), as well as letting you mix and match seekers to help deal with soft-kill measures.

RAIDING FLEETS(specifically liners and vauxhauls)
focus on DPS and EWAR. your goal isn't to sit there and take ungodly punishment, your ships are squishy, but with extremely high gun DPS. in the case of liners, you can also utilize your high fore/aft acceleration and speed to hide behind cover once you've emptied your clip into something, this is especially true with 450 and 250 liners

CAP/DAD FLEETS
really just have a little variety in your ships, an all corvette capfleet will rarely do as well as one with a couple destroyers and frigates mixed in, since corvettes may be the fastest and cheapest, but they cant hold points or punch up very well, and they make abysmal sensor craft. i recommend one or two serious punch-up ships for a cap fleet(i prefer 450mm lineships and beam destroyers) so that the enemy front line cant walk all over your cap points without taking a serious risk.

the game comes with a number of starter fleets, and many of them are excellent, easy to use, and fun, however some are better than others, and i wanted to add my feelings about them here, as i strongly recommend taking inspiration from the better starters, but looking at some of the bad ones can set you up for failure, so by faction, here are my thoughts on the starters, in the order they show up


ANS
TF Oak-simple in concept and execution, this fleet has been a staple of many a game. TF oak isn't the best double a out there, and many people have made arguments about some of its internals and mountings, but its still an exelent fleet, its practically the gold standard for hardkill point defense, has good utility, excellent firepower and is super easy to use. 8/10
TF birch- similar to oak, but with more of a focus on firepower and speed over durability, as that's what light cruisers are known for. the fleet is well built by a CL expert, its one of the only starters i would actually consider competitive even at higher level play, and overall well done, though it is a bit fragile 10/10
TF hemlock-this fleet was built by the final boss of missile guys(hunter) and it shows. most of the missiles are top tier, but many of them can be confusing for newbies to understand their roles(looking at you psykhe). Probably not best for your first game, Hemlock still is a very good fleet even for newbies, missile beam CAs are a great build. 8.5/10
TF redwood-great if you know your softkill, but if you don't that axford's lack of serious hardkill can be an issue. it does have great anticraft, but that means you have a lot of wasted points if the enemy doesn't bring carriers. overall the rail support can be vital in larger maps, but the cruiser's questionable use of points and large defensive gaps make this fleet tough for learners. 7/10
TF ash-this fleet was arguably the meta when i first started playing, however that meta has changed with the introduction of the second faction and with carriers, both of which added numerous counters to beam DD wolfpacks. i will say that this fleet is about the best beam wolfpack to exist, but with how good beam wolfpacks are it still isnt great. 4/10
TF sycamore-i'll be honest, i reeallly don't like this fleet. the missile tunings are all wrong, the fleet is extremely fragile, and adding an arsenal frig to a bomber fleet is just gonna land the (NEW!) player in APM hell if they try to use their cruise missiles while their orbital assets are still functioning. this fleet is very tough to play but doesn't offer the rewards to balance that risk. 1/10
TF maple-I'm not much of a carrier player, but as far as i can tell its pretty good. a well-costed levy with some nice scouting assets, its a good fleet that does the best it can to help newbies larn the ropes of carriers. i wouldn't say run this your first game, but a good fleet overall. 8/10
TF willow- this is an excellent cap fleet, its a little taller than most to help new players learn with having ships spread across the map, and i personally would prefer a beam destroyer instead of the light cruiser, but its still super well built. 9.5/10


OSP
amethyst squadron-its a pretty good carrier, again I'm no expert, but from what I've heard its definitely not bad, though of course carriers aren't the easiest comp to play for a newbie. 8.5/10
Azurite squadron-this thing is extremely questionable, the ocello over-focuses on an an anticraft role that it really doesn't need to, and the 450 revolver is extremely expensive and apm intensive choice over standard 450 LNs for a small increase in firepower. 3/10
cobalt squadron-its just oak but skinnier and(in my opinion) slightly better built. 10/10
garnet squadron- its an excellent monitor ball, similar to oak i do think you can build something a bit better without too much effort, but the fleet is still excellent for a first game. 9/10
kyanite squadron: a pair of the most forgiving 450 liners in existence, this fleet is similar to cobalt in that it offers a pair of durable fire platforms with plenty of defense and fire control systems, though, but it has the edge in burst damage at the cost of requiring the player to watch their heading and remember to deploy their craft. 10/10
tantalum squadron- a great capfleet, tantalum offers some very good capping platforms, as well as a pretty good missile monitor for punch-up. Allthough combining missiles with caps can be a really tough fleet to control, so definitely not a first-game type of fleet. 8/10
wulfenite squadron-great individual ships, but confused in purpose. wulfenite feels like its trying to fill gaps in a team comp, but doesn't really invest enough into any role to be very capable anywhere. 6/10
Zircon squadron- I disagree with some of the internals on the lineships, but its a perfectly serviceable CQB murder fleet. 8/10