Yeah fighters are mainly in my early games a fast response force used for frontier protection while my fleet maint can't afford large formations of capital ships or Orbital fortresses.
A buddy of mine designed a mega fortress that can carry I think he said 500 heavy corvettes which are about 50 kt I think.
Anyway my own carrier design can carry 100+ gunships which are all 75kt they are expensive as all get out and could not be built in an unmodded game without taking decades but I love them so far
Fighters are force multipliers if used right, if used poorly they are scrap metal and a waste of good pilots
If you really want to be inventive use a "shield fighter" like I've heard of where the entire fighter is only shields and engines and is only designed to take fire from the enemy to save capital ships from taking that fire.