well, ima take a pot shot at this, how about making the rebuild time for strike craft 3-4 times as long while in combat for light carriers, as well as making them use anti matter to replace their fighters and an initial cost to buy the squadron. dont know how this would go as far as balance is concerned but its an idea. as far as light carriers having weapons go, i think its a stupid idea but in reality i doubt any space ship in a combat role would go out with 0 weapons and only strike craft. but reality is not really that fun i suppose and the engine is limited in what it can do. anyhoo.

I remeber when the vasari carrier had weapons. man that was lols back then they had one squad and raped with their little pee shooter still. good time, good times and abusive ones. any noway should carriers get weapons.

I agree that upping flak frigates is the path to take. Carriers may be overpowered, but they're a really cool unit that works very differently from the rest of the unit types. They're good, yes, but don't forget that they're expensive and take a lot of fleet supply. The real problem is that there's no really good counter to carriers except other carriers. Currently, flaks are decent at clearing fighters, but they still don't work very well against bombers. This means that if you want to protect your fleet against a mixed strikecraft fleet, you have to invest in fighters. It's not healthy for a unit's only counter to be more of itself, obviously, and the natural counter to strikecraft are flak frigates. 

Of course, flak frigates have a few built-in tactical disadvantages against carriers. For one thing, flak frigates are much slower than the fighters they counter, which gives the carrier owner the ability to choose how, when, and where flak/fighter encounters will take place. Flak frigates also can't really destroy carriers -- only the strikecraft they produce. Think about how this is different from a typical counter, such as LRMs to counter light frigates. Most counters actually eliminate the ships they counter, but flaks leave carriers unhurt and able to retreat to fight another day. Moreover, wheras most unit counters CAN be deployed even when there aren't units to counter, even if they're not optimal, flak frigates are really pretty useless except as carrier stoppers.

I repeat, the answer to this problem is to make flak frigates VERY EFFECTIVE. Flak frigates are useless against anything but carriers, they have built-in disadvantages against carriers, and they can't deal effectively with bombers. The solution is to make flak frigates strong enough that they can TOTALLY SHUT DOWN a carrier fleet of equal or even greater size. That way, carriers can still be strong, cool units, but won't dominate as long as the other player invests fleet supply and resources in otherwise useless flak frigates.

only if flak ships get a upgrade to have  anti fighter/bomber missiles they have a fast recharge  and take little antimator

Why dont Terran aircraft carriers have serious weaponry of their own?

Not rational.

oh,and,add a gun to the carrier and it will become a mini cap....

Yes, it was disregarded, and for good reason. You're talking about science fiction - by definition, it's all made-up. Stop saying people are 'insane' because they think a defensive gun on a carrier would be realistic. Not only is it not your place to be telling people what is and isn't realistic in a fictional environment, you're also completely ignoring real-life examples.

Are you, perhaps, suggesting that US carriers aren't armed with Sea Sparrows? What about smaller carriers, like HMS Ocean, which is armed with 3 Phalanx emplacements? The suggestion that adding a flak turret magically takes up 7 fighter bays for an emplacement and magazine follows no examples from real-life and only makes sense in your own private world, where apparently bullets are all 5 feet long.

Congratulations on not thinking through your own post, and assuming that everyone will agree with your plucked-from-thin-air blueprints of a science fiction space carrier.

NB: I don't actually think carriers should have guns, as they don't need them. They're powerful enough as it is with their strike craft. Giving them guns would be more realistic and closer to real-world examples, but would not help the balance of the game, which really is the point of this thread.

I would also think that this would not upset the balance. since its not adding anysort of weapon, just a defence system.

Carriers don't have weapons because it's beneficial to their AI. Without standard weapons, a carrier has no reason to run into the thick of battle and get a box full of rape. This way, they sit outside on the edge of the gravwell, away from danger.

I propose that we give all carriers flak, Ruthlessness, and Missile Barrage.  That way they can defend themselves against enemy frigates and strikecrafts.

Flak, it isn't that kinda not smart since flak weapons is suppose to take out squadrons that you are housing?

carriers should use the same priciples that US carriers use  - standoff offensive punch via aircraft , yet retaining the ability to defend themselves in the short term using phalanx {?} defensive systems and short range misilles . Also to make it more fun carriers should not engage with fleet when fighting it should as I mentioned before be a standoff weapon with a small fleet of criusers and defensive fighter to protect it but also have above mentioned defensive capability