Having played more then my fair share of DA and a playthrough of DME I will say its up to preference really. DA wanzers are strong but if they start taking losses then you won't see as much of them in the end of a fight, plus its harder to stack Hanger bays for them due to their much higher DP/hanger ratio. Zephyrs are more or less the bread and butter of their forces and incidentally my fighter-heavy DA fleets only really had issues against DME fleets largely due to their heavy usage of EMP causing them to flameout and crash. Having a fleet of battle carriers means having a subset of ships that won't fold immediately when engaged by others of the same size, not to mention that DA gets stronger the longer a fight goes. DA Recsons lend themselves well to stand offs with fighter heavy backup and can have a few front runners with Grave/Glowtusk combos for stronger sustained damage output.
DME has more traditional fighter wings and usage which I prefer. Although the DA Maelstrom is hands down the best and most versatile of all capitals and the Astral has the easiest to use system for its own fighters. The DME Jeanne D'Arc shouldn't be discounted in its own versatility. Its ship system applies to all damage to a ship, not just from you or your fighters with a nice 3000 range. This means it can also be used to assist other carriers' bombers too or to tip the scales in a nearby 1 v 1 or X v X in your side's favor by a whopping 25% damage with high uptime. And while it doesn't have the firepower or defenses to compete against a battle capital, it has enough shield strength and weaponry to reliably ward off cruisers and below making it a strong frontliner for battle line flanks in addition to what it can do independently with its 6 fighter bays. Its very slow to maneuver, but its multitude of tools allows it to project advantages in multiple locales as it needs to.
DME also has a much larger selection of fighter types available compared to DA even before blade breakers. Though if you include them, then last I checked the Brisance wings are vicious bombers running 2 2000 damage energy torpedos per wing, meaning that regardless of shielding or armor if the torpedo hits it hits hard. Aigrettes are very good at clearing out most other wings in-game, and Harridans can allow you to safely destroy any solo ship that doesn't have 360 shields. You can also use Rafale IIs as glorified Piranhas for station killing. Be aware that aside from the "experimental" ships DME doesn't have a very strong set of reliable frontline capability to hold a line for carriers due to all the range cutting, for the carriers unable to use ITU to the combat vessels that get ranges above X amount cut in half based on size.
