The BASICS
A fleet is made up of a commander and nine zones to place ships.

The order in which your ships will fire is as pictured here.

The rules for designing a fleet are as follows:

1 Don't add ship sizes that your commander offers no bonus for
  (Yes I am showing a commander who should be overseeing cruisers, but the fleet is all frigates)
  (You CAN add different hull sizes if the commander offers equal benefit
  (B rating in frigates and B in cruisers for example))
2 Don't add ships with weapons that your commander offers no bonus for
  (In this case, my commander should have fighter based ships in his fleet (Ship-based))
3 Don't add ships with different movement speeds
  (All ships in a fleet MUST move as slow as the slowest ship in it. Can reduce agility and dodge bonuses)
4 If you include different weapons, whether on same or different ships, make sure they do not have conflicting firing ranges. You would stop half your weapons from being able to fire.

FIRING RANGES and COOLDOWNS:
Ballistic: 1-2 (No Cooldown, can fire every round)
Laser: 2-5 (Cooldown 1 round)
Missiles: 5-8 Cooldown 3 rounds)
Fighter: 6-10 (Cooldown 4 rounds)
Planetary: 0-1 (Cooldown 1 round)

The only 'legal' weapons combinations for ships or fleets are as follows:
- Ballistic / Laser (Directional)
- Laser / Missile
- Missile / Fighter (Ship-based)

ORDER OF COMBAT:
- A commanders SPEED helps deturmine which fleets fire in what order, yours and the enemies.
- With 9 zones you get 9 shots against your enemy in the order pictured above.
- On the first round of combat all weapons must begin their cooldown periods before firing.

HEY HOW COME MY SHIPS DONT ALWAYS FIRE?
** If an enemy fleet is destroyed before all your ships get to shoot,
** Those ships will attack another fleet on the next round.
** When you see your fleet start attacking from zone 5 and you think zone 1-4 were skipped,
** this is why.
** (zone 1-4 fired on the previous round, and are under cooldown this round, and zone 5+ are not)

SHIP QUANTITIES
Since a fleet gets the most shooting opportunities with ships in all 9 zones, fleet amounts are combinations of nine.

When someone mentions a fleet size of 900, they usually mean 100 ships per zone (9 times 100 = 900)

100 Ships per zone = 900 ships in the fleet
200 Ships per zone = 1800 ships in the fleet
300 Ships per zone = 2700 ships in the fleet
400 Ships per zone = 3600 ships in the fleet
500 Ships per zone = 4500 ships in the fleet
600 Ships per zone = 5400 ships in the fleet
700 Ships per zone = 6300 ships in the fleet
800 Ships per zone = 7200 ships in the fleet
900 Ships per zone = 8100 ships in the fleet (Maximum firing Battlecruisers)
1000 Ships per zone = 9000 ships in the fleet (Maximum firing Cruisers)
1100 Ships per zone = 9900 ships in the fleet (Maximum firing Frigates)
** You can have more ships in a stack, but the amount that will fire each round is limited as above)

FORMATION PENALTY

- Being attacked from the side or from behind causes a formation penalty.
- This penalty also applies to the attacker when shooting with one or two stacks of their own ships in the line of fire.
(Both of these situations are unavoidable and impossible to design against, so dont worry about it)

You COULD put only three Stacks of ships in a fleet to avoid the second penalty. A diagonal tic tac toe pattern.
XOO OOX
OXO OXO
OOX XOO
The loss of firepower overall and the fact that you get to shoot 3 times, while the enemy gets to shoot back 9 times
((Each stack would have to survive three attacks before it could make one itself - not counting cooldown issues))

There is a commander with a special ability to negate this penalty ( HELOYCE )
- "Removes the formation penalty when your fleet is under attack and increases fleet stability. Affected by Dodge."

FLEET MAKEUP

A fleet can be attacked from any of 4 sides (as pictured above).
Therefore the corner zones potentially can be attacked more often then other positions.

You can design your fleets in many ways based on the needs of the instance or the enemy.
Basically I have two design strategies

STANDARD ATTACK and CORNER TANKS

STANDARD ATTACK
Works for most situations, I always start with this style.

- Load the fleet with higher combat (Low to no defenses) ships.
- Place an equal number in all nine zones.
- Try to get to the max firepower quantities (Frigates:1100 / Cruisers:1000 / Battlecruisers:900)
- When I loose a single ship i abort the fight and increase the quantities.
- I increase quantity until I can achieve ONE-SHOT kills.
- Sometimes I begin work on a new fleet as well. (More fleets, more shots per round!!)

CORNER TANKS
When the enemy still beats your ships to a bloody pulp no matter how hard you try.

- Change the corner zones with ship stacks having little or NO weapons. All shields and defenses.

These 'TANKS' survive and absorb damage well. Leaving the other 5 positions to get the job done.
In extream situations you can swap the other 5 zones with medium shield, medium weapons also.
Be careful, if an instance lasts 40 rounds you loose and get no prize.

NAMING CONVENTIONS
To keep me from making mistakes with different movement speed ships and conflicting weapons ranges, I name my ships and fleets with a notation to make things very clear.

- Start by listing FCB for Frigate, Cruiser or Battlecruiser.
- Add an 'M' and the amount of movement the ship has.
- Next add the letter for the primary weapon the ship uses and the amount of that weapon
---B, Ballistic
---L, Laser (Directional)
---M, Missiles
---F, Fighters (Ship-based)
---P, Planetary
(If you use two weapons then repeat for the second)

Since you would normally use your best version of the weapon, it is assumed and not needed for the notation.
If you sell these in the Trading Center, list the attack power in the description.

Some examples:

CM3F10 (Cruisers hull, Movement 3, with 10 Fighter weapons)
FM1B6L6 (Frigate Hull, Movement 1, with 6 Ballistics and 6 Laser weapons)

FLEET NAMES
These names are basically the same as the ship name in most cases.
A fleet of CM3F10's would get the same fleet name as the ship name.

If you create two fleets with the same ships, then call then a,b,c, etc...
Fleet 1: CM3F10a
Fleet 2: CM3F10b

If you mix ship types in a fleet you can name the fleet with both hull sizes in the name
(This assumes the commander supports both hull sizes)
(This also assumes you would use the same weapons on both ships being added to the fleet)
FBM2B12 (Frigates and Battlecruisers, all movement 2 and using 12 Ballistic weapons)

If you are mixing weapons in a fleet I would only mention the weapon types and not quantity.
CBM5LM (Cruisers and Battlecruisers, all move 5 and using both Lasers and Missiles)

LEFTOVERS FLEET
When a ship design becomes to weak to deal with the current instances I am trying to defeat,
I move them into a special fleet I call LEFTOVERS.

This fleet is not expected to do much useful damage to my enemies,
but it will save my other fleets from a few enemy attacks.

So I dont expect firing ranges and commander benefits to line up well.
I do try to find an all B commander for each ship size to minimize the penalties some.