at least in vanilla the fighter gunboat thing is going to be a non-issue. there is not a single carrier that makes a decent gunship, most of them barely even qualify for the title "missile support" and since LRMs are mostly a joke and aren't going to get better that's hardly an issue.
i mean, what are you going to make a gunship? an astral? you plan to close with the enemy in a very vulnerable carrier that will never be able to disengage and primarily relies on spammable missiles (which it can spam from across the map anyway?) there's simply nothing to worry about. probably the "shootiest" is the heron, which has what, a single heavy blaster? tops?
It is possible to tune some dedicated carriers into effective gunships but, admittedly, they cannot beat a dedicated gunship. If there were advantages to using fighters and/or the carrier had an special campaign advantage, then being the absolute best at brawling would not be a requirement. Alas, with current game balance, there is no point to fighters by endgame, and competing among the best is a requirement. Since carriers cannot keep up, they too are useless by endgame, except possibly Gemini due to it being a passable freighter.
Before the days of officers, peak performance for all ships, and 25 ship limit, both Astral and Heron could be made into viable gunboats. Heron had two useful configurations: Heavy Blaster and burst PD for assault, or Heavy Mauler and tactical lasers for sniping. Heron was fast enough to kite and could slowly wear down fleets. It was basically an extra large Wolf that trades phase skimmer for two flight decks. As for Astral, just three heavy blasters on the left and no missiles (that cost OP). Astral played much like a slower, fatter, and squishier Odyssey. It could not solo things quite as well as Odyssey because Astral was too fat to dodge things Odyssey could, but Astral with max OP could brawl in a pinch.