Since nobody else has yet, let me be the first to welcome you:
HI!
Cheers,
Erik

Great, new ships straight out of dry dock, new systems, green crew, no shakedown, and....cannon fodder.  What else could go wrong today?   

By the way, what's the secret to designing carriers?  I either end up with a bubble carrier with lots of empty space that goes "pop" as soon as it's hit, or a battle ship with lots of empty space, or one that costs a galactic butt ton.  Where's the balance?

I tend to have carriers a point or two slower than the rest of the actual battleline ships, heavy on the close defense, and light on the offensive weaponry...then cram about 6-10 fighter flights aboard. Or, if I don't want fighters...it becomes a missile spawning monster...  :twisted:

Heck...you're not cannon fodder...mine fodder...but seldom cannon...

I like the escort carrier idea - no shields, very slow, just a hull carrying fighters - you can get them as down as cheap as independent fighter flights would be, without exposure to the points loss at the front of battle.  This makes a sitting duck if your opponent gains fighter superiority or can get some seekers through your defences, but then they're not firing those resources at the actual fighting ships.

In a campaign setting there's a much better case for armoured carriers - not so much punch for the cost, but more likely to stick around from game to game.  Depends how your games are structured.

I'm interested in the use of strikers and seekers and how others do this?  Not had much chance to experiment yet, but it seems to me that using cheap strikers as interceptors, and seekers as bombers, would enable big carriers to pulverise opposition at long range with little risk to self (or a host of smaller ships to do so).

Interesting tactic, wouldn't its success depend on the number of fighters faced?  I'm wondering how a fleet heavy on fighters that was able to synchronise ship, fighter and seeker attacks would do.

I had reached similar conclusions about AFBs recently...  longer range, higher rate-of-fire, more accurate weapons tend to work much better for the same price.  I've been experimenting with creating a 'bubble' of overlapping anti-fighter weapons fire, with some success; the last time I used it (against a fairly carrier-heavy fleet), I cleaned almost all of their fighters out in the first turn, which opened up the way for my seekers in turn 2.  I tend to go with missile frigates full of seekers or strikers, backed up by cruisers and battlecruisers that also carry one or two flights each.  Rarely use fighters, and when I do I make sure to increase their accuracy significantly and use them mainly for defense against enemy fighters and strikers; on offense they die too easily.

Yeah, I find CAP to be fairly effective.  I had not considered combining CAP and Dogfighting; can a flight on CAP start a dogfight instead of attacking when intercepting?  That would be kind of awesome, and makes reasonable sense.  Yeah, fighter superiority is tricky...  I tend to go for striker saturation against my brother (my primary opponent), who favors using a few expensive ships, one of which is usually a dedicated fighter carrier.  He tends to use his fighters to attack my ships, though, rather than intercepting.
And the rock-paper-scissoring is an interesting notion.  It's something I've sort of seen in my recent playtests of converted Battlefleet Gothic ships; the Imperials have the missiles and armor, Chaos has the guns, and the Eldar have the fighters and the speed.  Tactics and fire arcs can make the difference, though; one game, the Eldar tried to outflank/envelope the Imperials, only to find the Imperial C and D weapons to be rather effective.