What makes a carrier a carrier part II

Pete wrote

One person mentioned that a Carrier is any ship whose Fighter
  Bay mass exceeds 1/2 of the available system mass.  I also remember
someone saying that a Carrier is a ship whose Fighter Bay mass exceeds
  1/2 of the damage boxes.

> Alan wrote:

Unless you're designing a Q-ship.

In message <199609271805.OAA29243@cliff.cris.com> Mike Miserendino writes:
> Alan wrote:

...or housing fighters in a drop-ship bay.

I've been thinking about another way to make carriers ("real" ones) different
from other heavy combatants. In Starfire, carriers are faster than
battleships, the idea being that a fighter bay takes up a good bit of volume
but not as much mass as heavy armor, big guns, etc. So it would be possible to
create a rule where if you had more mass of fighter bays than
such-and-so
that even if the ship were a capital ship, it would use the engine
construction rules for a cruiser. As a recall, WWII carriers were faster than
WWII battleships anyway.

Another carrier idea I was tossing around was Light Fighter Bays. They would
mass 4 but still cost 20. They could only carry Light fighters (and not "Light
Heavies" would could theoretically be explained as screened light fighters).
This way you could better simulate those vessels (like Star Destroyers) that
carry loads of fighters (and if a TIE fighter isn't a Light Fighter, I don't
know what is. Never get me to fly an eggshell like
that...).

        James