What's your best carrier design?

[Puke]

if its going to be with a fleet, make sure you have enough engines on it not to slow the rest of the fleet down. if you have a resupply ship with the fleet, i would not worry about extra supply space on the carrier. and unless you are planning on playing tatical combat against a human I would not worry about point defense or too much armor either.

odds are you are going to give it a order set something like launch fighters and dont get hurt, it should retreat to the edge after it has launched its load. that means the only time it will be attacked is after the rest of your fleet is already waxed, and the only thing extra defenses will do is buy it time in the hopes that 30 turns run out before it can be destroyed.

of course, if you are going to use tactiacal combat, you might keep it up close to support other ships with its point defense, but you might as well use the space on fighters and have a dedicated point defense ship.

also, you may want to consider only having enough fighter bays for 1/2 or 1/3 of your fighters and putting the rest into cargo containers. it will slow down launch time, but increase your overall capacity.