Are bombers the ultimate weapon?

While there are many powerful turrets, in my experience the game is heavily biased toward carrier ships, especially multi-hangar classes. If you have a fleet of 3 x 2 hangar ships, with a well upgraded (max numbers + range and burst) mix of missile/plasma bombers (I usually do a 4/2 ratio) and basic PD (say two upgraded bolters a piece), and you zone in at a distance from the enemy, you can essentially steamroll anything. You might as well have no main weapons (though if you just use Projectile Cannons your ships are nearly untouchable). The fighters themselves stop nearly all incoming fire either (a) by absorption or (b) smothering with the massive amount of projectiles. Coupled with the fact that they quickly replenish (at no resource cost) and are fast enough to catch anything, no other setup really compares.
- Pure long range is very difficult, as you basically sacrifice any real missile/fighter defense, plus if you are outnumber they will snipe you first!
- A heavily protected close ranged armed option is also not really viable, because you chase the enemy around the whole map while they whittle you away with a damn Projectile Canon, since their are no speed upgrades. Both situations exacerbated by the g-d d-mn shield ignoring missles (in what Newtonian universe does that make sense?).

Essentially on hard mode, especially later maps, there's only one decent option.

Anyone else have similar experiences?