Custom Ship/Fleet strategy designs?

If I understand the question correctly: yes it is supposed to be possible, though the bug in 1.33 prevents it for now.

In the Target Type Order list of the combat strategy you are using, you can set certain types of targets to a range setting of "Do Not Engage". That should enable what you're looking for, though again, not in 1.33. The combat simulator can be used to see if you got it right.

As for staying out of range of the planet, I don't think you can directly specify that. If a ships strategy calls for engaging enemy ships but not a planet, and the enemy ships are somehow in the shadow of the planetary defenses, well, I suppose your ship could find itself fired upon by the planet.

In 5.25 with BM, I told my ships not to fire on planets without defenses. They don't but thye then take off in the other direction and will flee the sector if escape is enabled. There is no way to tell them to stay put without grabbing them and sending them to a point manually.

In 5.33 with BM, changing targeting of planets is not allowed without editing the strategy files so one has to grab the combat ships and send them to a point away from the planet to keep them from glassing it.

I like to put the warp points in the hex of one of my homeworlds and there are some irritating things that happen there. I keep baseships to guard the warp points and have cruisers to chase down the quick little ships that manage to get by my baseships. Well, the cruisers like to go in and get crushed by the dreadnaughts coming through the warp points because they get there faster than the baseships. That and the baseships are always getting out of position because they don't reset their positions after combat.

It would be great to have a flexible strategy system.