IMO, carrier spam has become an issue. Carriers are much harder to destroy now, and the best counter to them (light frigates) are not effective because they die too easily and too quickly in an environment littered with LRFs.

Light frigates should be buffed. They either need more firepower or need to cost less.

As for countering the strikecraft, flaks don't have the firepower they did in 1.05, so you will need more of them. In a medium sized engagement on a small map, I like to have 16-20, plus about 4-8 of my own carriers with nothing but fighters. TEC also has the best anti-strikecraft capital ship abilities, IMO. Kol battleship's flak burst is pretty deadly to fighters once you level it up. Also, the Dunov gets two things that work against strikecraft. Magnetize is the obvious one, and is also humorous to watch. Magnetize is particularly effective against Vasari strikecraft, since they have small numbers of strikecraft per squadron. The Dunov's EMP charge can also be indirectly used to neutralize strikecraft. Carriers have to spend anti matter to replace lost strikecraft. Remove their anti matter with EMP charge, and the rate of replacement goes to nothing, giving your strikecraft total space superiority and making his carriers big fat helpless targets.

I for one allways wondered why the light frigate was more expensive then the LRMs. The cost only made them more useless. Not to mention they use more supply.

As for flacks, I tink they should try to keep a 1/2 to 2/3 ration of flaks/carriers to get to a point were you'll have enought flaks to severly limit the fighters/bombers. I think that would be the Butter zone.

Remember that the only real counter to bombers are fighters. Flak actually isn't that good against bombers. It will kill them, but it will take a long time. The only strikecraft it's good against is the fighters. It's kind of weird, because the game itself doesn't say this, which is misleading. When you look at the description of flak craft, it says "Strong vs. Strikecraft."

However, if I recall, the flak is only good against the fighter's armor, and not the bomber's. Fighters are considered "Very Light" and bombers are "Light." Flak is effective against "Very Light" but not "Light" while Fighters are effective against "Light."

Also, Fighters themselves got a slight buff against many ship types, allowing them to be very useful.

Long story short: If you're afraid of bombers, focus on fighters. Use your fleet to take care of their flak, because that's the biggest threat to fighters.