I don't use pure carrier fleets so can't really say how do fighters scale en masse. I usually look at carriers as either support or bombers. In this update due to changes to xyphos I tend to shy away from carriers more often then not since I can have a consistent spread of ion cannons in the fleet since AI no longer puts them all on the same ship because reasons.
Mixing bombers and fighters on the same ship is kinda weird, to be frank. Fighters with flares work well as PD deterrence and can lower the deployment rate to stay higher depending on relative wing sizes however you also loose a bit of damage output from bomber wings which may lead to ineffectual runs that accomplish zilch. Some pairing allows the AI to keep fighters on target while one bomber wing goes back and forth delivering payloads as soon as a bomber is rearmed, but in a big fight this doesn't work as well since one or two carrier is not enough to keep fighters alive. Engagement range can be an issue as well if the carriers back off or go away from each other too far, so having many flight decks is more optimal for fighters but ships that have many decks aren't that great for fighters. So something like astral with 1 broadswords wing and everything else as bombers is great.
As pure fighter carriers, pairing broadswords and single thunder wing produce a very good hard flux pressure and decent EMP, but they are vulnerable to EMP and flameouts from stray shots. Not ideal for big fights or station battles unless you mass them in tens of wings.
Plus thunders have longer engagement range so AI can throw them separately from broadswords which tends to lead to quick losses of thunders. Also a major issue for warthogs since if you pair them with anything else they will stay behind since AI don't like to be in that 2000 range while piloting a carrier with no decent armament or while having wings with longer engagements range, which is most of the carriers.
Reserve deployment got hit fairly hard due to deployment rate cost of the ability so pairing it with fighter wings is almost guaranteed to deplete it quicker than it would on other carriers. As such I can't say that it's competitive in a big fight and the cost of deployment on ships with it isn't worth it, IMO. Even for bombers.
So I kinda end up with xyphos on converted hangars on relatively fast destroyers and heron full of piranhas (piranhas got some weird stuff going on with all those speed buffs since they tend to unload slower then they reach the target, on a bright side it's a lot harder to evade them). Was thinking about switching heron to two scintillas for faster bomber turnout but they don't house any manned wings so... Still farming some flash bombers. Tons of mods really, really don't help with this. Initially I was considering broadsword spam but they are a little too squishy on converted hangars and I never fielded pure carrier fleet so... Idk. Might work but with fairly high crew cost?
As far as PD duty goes, currently wasps seem to be doing the most decent job but by mostly face blocking projectiles and dropping mines everywhere. They aren't as good at clearing out large quantities of fighters as compared to locust. Thanks to new skills gryphon can have triple the base ammo pool and rearm twice so he can fire it pretty much non-stop until he gets to 0 CR.