[The Puke Empire]

I deploy some 'muylti-role' fighters with rockets or torpedos and they deliver some massive damage, usually cripple DNs if not killing them in a single turn (but then u gotta retreat to safety for the reloads)

But fighters do suffer casualties, I was destroyed by the Amonkrie Lastnight not because my battleGroups failed in combat but the sneaky bastards destroyed my supply fleet carrying 260 newly build heavy fighters with shields! All my ship designs are of support roles to my carriers and there I was without fighters, my fleets were destroyed my worlds razed... some system with battlesataion held on but I later decided it was too much of a mess, I surrendered and will start a new game. (I always like the first half portions of 4x games much better than the later half when if u survive you will no dobut process huge advantages over the AI, be it MOOII or civ it's the same).

Interestingly enough the default amonkrie race fought pretty well, each of my BGs could carry 120 ~ 180 fighters and every battle I lost about half or 1/3 of the fighters. They have PD mounts on most of their ships, some ships have 6 PDs (3 was the most I have seen before), and they use fighters, hordes of them. This is not even EA, who is in alliance with me... har.