For my carriers, I equip them depending on the rest of my fleet. If i'm running a frigate heavy fleet, I bring khopesh and broadswords/longbows. This is so the carriers can assist the frigates in cracking bigger ships. For a cruiser heavy fleet, I bring daggers instead of khopesh so they miss less against smaller targets.
Xyphos fighters (high) are essentially mediocre PD mixed with decent EMP damage to enemy ships. They're great at what they do, and they can disable enemy ships such that the carrier can catch them, but Xyphos fighters are not going to have the same impact that other fighters have. They are very support oriented, and they tend to die against enemy fighters unless the mothership has a lot of PD, which begs the question of why the ship is running Xyphos in the first place. Their real strength is that they can be sent to escort other ships, which, in theory at least, means the ship acting as the vanguard can have a fleet (say 5-10 wings) of xyphos escorting it.
Xyphos can't escort anymore, their roam range got reduced to 0. The purpose of xyphos is to disable enemy ship through their shields and help win flux war by disabling weapons, their pd is just a nice bonus. They still have a 1200 range ion beam which gives them more range than, say, an odyssey with plasma cannons and itu.