You dont need an escort fleet when you can go from A to B in a moment notice, in fact, having all ships one next to each other means greater risk of detection, the GTA and GTVA actually makes things right by not traveling in fleets.
My point of carriers and battleships would be that, this "mix" of the two creates a hybrid that, is not as powerfull has it should be for combat and if it goes down, you losse your fighter base as well, and you dont want the enemy to known were your carriers are(the GTA you are actually use them for ship to ship combat), and if one is discovered and can still jump somewhere else, this is not WW2.
You cant replace carriers with static bases that would be suicidal in a universe where the enemy can come out of nowhere at any moment, you also need a place for repair, ream and rest. So you always need mobility.
This hybrid design makes sence for the Vasudan war, where the ships were so strong to the avalible anti-capital ship weapons that you needed something that was able to hold his own and deploy fighters as the main weapon. When you have a enemy like the Shivans that can melt your ships in seconds, you need to keep moving ALL THE TIME, the carriers need to be moving constanly to avoid detection, just stoping to launch and recover, not expose them to directly engage enemy ships to try to gain and maintrain space control. Hybrid ships makes the most sence for some behind the lines and special ops, the Hades is a perfect example of a ship designed for massive behind the line ops whiout support, but not as the bulk of your fleet when you face a enemy like the Shivans. And FS tells you that. The only carrier, that we know, that was suprised and destroyed is the Galatea, and we dont fully know how that happened. Then look at how many destroyers were put in harm's way in FS2 in order to maintain a position or guard a node.
I always had this idea on how a fleet should work in the FS universe, but when i played Empyrion galatic survival in multiplayer i confirmed all of that, when you are building a carrier, you are already making it weak by all the hollow/storage space inside that could be actually be used for armor and aux systems, and if you losse the carrier thats terrible because you are also lossing your fighters and everything to support that. And lossing it because you are attacking other ships directly when you can actually be using a ship designed for that and having the carrier very far away sending support and rearming and repairing from a safe place makes no sence.