If surprise can play a part, you may want to use the Light Carrier as your main hull for your warships, giving you pretty good warships (roughly on par with a Light Cruiser, with more armour but lacking the +10% bonus to defence) with added versatility.
Such a ship could very well feature only direct fire weaponry (no fighter coverage), and so the other players may expect you not to use fighters at all. If you ever see a weakness in the PDC coverage (such as only one or two PDC per ship), you ought to start building fighters to put on these carriers, especially ships with shields. (The best shields give them +64 hitpoints for 4kt, almost enough to sustain the 65 damage points of a PDC V)
Obviously, it mostly works in the early game, as the Light Carrier becomes overgunned later on by the regular hulls. (And the following Carrier hulls do not pack the same punch as the Light Carrier, and do require a lot of research) But sheer numbers should be able to do decent damage, and having a period of peace would allow you to build up a sizeable force of fighters (which do not require any maintenance, unlike ships). A force of several thousand fighters is not to be laughed at, and could deal serious punishment during a battle. Unfortunately, you should also expect heavy casulaties, as such a battle is more likely to happen in deep space rather than at a wormhole. (Unless Warp Openers are disabled that is)
Lastly, fighters lack defensive and offensive bonuses past the early game, as ships can be on par once some research is done. (ECM III and the two armours giving defence bonuses are enough to cancel the fighter's offence bonus ; likewise, Combat Sensors III will nullify the fighter's defence bonus) Besides, ships can be trained while fighters cannot, and so your fighters will be even more prone to enemy fire, either from PDC or from direct fire weapons. (You can put your fighters into a fleet however, but you should be careful while doing so since they eat up a lot of supplies if put in a fleet along with ships) So a combined arms operation seems the most effective way to use them, as otherwise they will not Last long against ships with high offence and defence Ratings. Either that, or bring a *lot* of fighters with good shielding and cross your fingers.
