The amount of fire power on those things is insane. This is the A/D on the carrier fighters right now in my game.
96 80 36
43 40 41
Thats on a small hull.
For comparsion my useless medium escort ships
0 0 144
0 120 0
The fighters have equal defense to my escorts and out gun them by 38% on a hull that has 40% less capacity
I also tried to build out the fighters in the designer, but ran out of space after fitting the weapons. I didn't have any room for defense or tactical engines.
Add in that ships only seem to be able to fire once per round, meaning a huge ship can only at best take out 1 fighter before getting pummeled by the remaining fighters....
My suggestion for the future is that there be a carrier fighters be a lot weaker. Add in a focus tech for carriers that allows you to pick the class of weapon you want equipped. Bring the A/D in line with what a small hull can actually carry, also limit it to one of each type of carrier module per ship, as right now in my game the AI has 2-3 modules on it's carries while I pack 6 (6 modules on one ship! Thats 18 fighters per ship!) Lossing a fighter should mean something, they should not auto regen after a battle. Let it at least take a turn or two, as right now unless you knock out a carrier in the battle the battle meant nothing for the next fight, as all it's fighter as back and at complete health It's no wonder my game has turned into carrier vs carrier battles