Are carrier fleets viable?

[Roubik]

I am thinking on my next playthrough to make a carrier fleet once tech permits it. That means if I focus on making cruisers and battleships with carriers, will it be a viable/efficient fleet?
My main concern is that in my current game I faced the nanite fleets from l-gate, they had fleets of 5 big ships, all with carriers. My torpedo corvette fleet simply melted them...

 

[Ariphaos]

Strike craft are a testament to how far behind ship design in Stellaris is. I sometimes use them for roleplay reasons, but that's it.

Hangars store a pitiful number of craft, have a pitiful replenishment rate, don't launch until combat begins (rather than the moment they are in-system), strike craft got their range nerfed back to 8 for some reason, AI loves to stack point defense. Only interceptors act as fighters now. If a carrier goes down, its strike craft magically go down with it.

You can beat the AI with it. You won't melt fleets the way you can with alpha-strike focused fleet builds, however.

 

[Mikhail_Mengsk]

It will be very subpar, and also AI fleets seems to like PD/Flak very much.