Bleh indeed...
Any ship can carry fighters, not just carriers.
Try fitting out a few transports as light carriers as soon as you get LF-01, you'll be pleasantly surprised at the mischief you can cause with them
Projectile guns are pretty nice as they start out as long range and fire pretty fast, they're just a bit weak but they're available right from the start.
I use PWs on my larger ships either mounted in 3 pairs for 360 coverage, or as main armament for my pickets - and also as point defense when i can build the micro-phage gun (the fire rate of that thing is INSANE
)
Energy guns are powerful and get decent accuracy bonuses, but start out very slow and short ranged.
As they develop they get faster and longer ranged (and get bigger accuracy bonuses).
These things are what make fighters so dangerous.
I usually use EWs as point defence mounted either as single units or in multiples of 3 to take advantage of the PD firing limit - which as you might have guessed is 3...)
I'll sometimes build cruisers which are pretty much all engine, shield and armour and fit them with a full bank of fwd. firing EWs for dashing in and killing things quickly.
Missiles are pretty nice, they're powerful, long ranged and can penetrate shields - they're just slow. Very slow (and can be shot down).
Mounted in the side slots missiles can be used to engage enemies as you maneuver around them (same for any weapons, just missiles are better as they don't need to be aimed) doing this you can dance around entire fleets picking them to pieces whilst taking minimal damage.
My defending ships are setup with side missiles, but attacking ships work better with fwd. mounted ones.
Long-Range missiles are a bit odd...
When they work they're pretty spectacular, and when they fail they do so miserably.
They're bigger and slower than normal missiles, but hit much harder and have a huge reach (they also don't track as well as the other missiles
)
They work well as side mounted defensive weapons if you can afford the the space (as above) but they've always seemed a bit too easy to shoot down to make them good attacking weapons - so use them like a Synaptic, just kick a few out in the hopes they'll be suitably distracting.
And finally, Energy cannons.
These things are really fun.
They're like a melting pot of all the other weapons, they have the range of projectiles, the power and accuracy of lasers and can attack planets like bombs.
As far as I'm concerned these make everything else obsolete for everything except point defence
I mount my escort ships with 3 of these (1 in each arc), and my main attack ships with fwd. mounted cannons as many as they can carry.
Even my support ships (minesweepers, carriers, repair ships, etc...) are fitted with these so they can at least bomb planets and attack other ships from behind the main fleet.
Hehe, and I do agree that carriers are usually too little, too late, but then again - just use transports.
Just out of curiosity how does your end-game fleet look?
Mine is almost always half and half cruisers and light carriers.
