The cool thing about carriers in 1.12 is that while they are very powerful, they can be countered fairly easily if the enemy doesn't build some other ships to support the carriers. Carriers feel pretty powerful because they are the ships actually killing your LRF's or HC's, Caps, Structures....but if the carriers don't have escorts, you can screw them up with the lowly basic assault frigate.
I know a lot of people don't like it 1.12's balance, but it still feels better to me than 1.05, which only required Assailants as Vasari, Illuminators as Advent, or Kodiaks as TEC. Combined with some support ships, there was almost no need for anything other than a couple capitals in your fleet. In 1.12 you truly have to build counters to what the other guy has.
I suspect at some point Carriers will get a small speed decrease so they can't kite other ships to death. I got to play Blair one time where I was running carriers in circles while fighting him and I think he mentioned it was a bit OP. 
I have mixed feelings about Flak though...it IS effective if you build enough of it, but the problem is you then have a ton of ships that don't do much damage to anything other than strikecraft or long range frigates. On the flip side, if you make them stronger specifically against strikecraft, carriers will be very easy countered and no one will build them anymore.