It's lonely here! (First post!)

[Hunpecked]

The Tessellate race is in the TDM Modpack.

I, too, prefer to fight battles manually. If my ships have a range advantage over the enemy (e.g. PPB vs DUC or APB vs PPB), I can exploit it far better than the AI can. By the same token, however, manual combat makes it much harder to get a challenging game from the AIs, so I've learned to live with strategic combat (with all its shortcomings).

I haven't had much luck with fleet strategies in strategic combat. Using a max range strategy and compact formation, often the first row (only) is in range and the following rows can't fire. With a wide formation, a turn by the leader can put one wing out of the battle entirely and the other too close to the enemy. I've had better results setting all ships to break formation and use their individual ship strategies, though this doesn't always work well, either. Using separate fleets for different ship types may be a workable compromise.

[Xrati]

I've been using smaller fleets with varying stratigies. Early game fleets would consist of this for me. Carrier group= Carrier, ~4 escorts(PD), Minesweepers and a scout(scanners) as it becomes available. Missile Group= 4-6 missile ships. Combat Group= varies on what weapons are available. These three groups should work well in any situation. Carrier Group(Diamond formation, Fighter Attack orders and Don't get hurt movement. Missile Group (Wall formation, Max range order and Max range movement. Combat Group (ANY, break all ships out of formation and let the individual ships stratigy work for you. Remember that it's better to have ten 10 ship fleets then to have one 100 ship fleet.

[Suicide Junkie]

It is generally considered best to simply have your fleet "Break Formation" all the time.

Let each ship fly to its own optimal range, plus as a bonus you get all the fleet experience in one bigger pool.

[Xrati]

But it is soooooo unstructured!
If you want to capture planets you'll have to use the small fleet theory or the fleet will trash the planet.

[Suicide Junkie]

Actually, all you need are transports with "capture planet" strategies.
With the fleet set to break formation, those transports will definitely be trying to capture, and all the warships will oblige them.

Not long ago, I attacked an enemy homeworld with a three-pronged attack.

Two troop transports came in from the left sector, two from the right sector, and my warfleet came down from the top. (All on the same day, for a single combat)

The enemy fleet ended up in a wall formation facing to the side, which gave my warships a great flanking position at the top of the "T". The battle raged, and the troop transports swooped in from the sides, taking only a few hits before dropping about 500 units on the planet.
Almost all of my ships were crippled, but not many were destroyed. Quite a nice result, for what I was originally expecting to be a suicide mission against superior numbers

BTW; with break formation, my missile ships got to stay back and lob, my torpedo boats got in and slugged it out, and my PD ships ran around chasing missile packs. Every ship got to fire at their own best targets, and move to the proper range for their guns against that target. Staying in formation, even with small sub-fleets would mean lots of ships moving to sub-optimal positions in order to stay in formation.
I don't want any of my missile boats getting too close to the enemy guns, and my gunboats and PD ships need to hound their targets closely.

By the end that single warfleet had collected 2% experience (starting from scratch); all the ships will benefit from that in the future, and all the warships will contribute to increasing it (even though they are breaking formation, they are still part of the fleet)