>> I'd go with 250 ton fighters instead of the 500 ton ones shown here
So would I, if I had the tech to do it. Alternatively, you could use a single bay per FAC, and maybe put some arms or armour on them, or just make smaller, faster, stealthier Fi-Cons
>> If it were me I would move the active search sensor to a dedicated craft
Yes, I'd either use these as a way of giving planet based fighters a bit more zip and range, or base them off a dedicated FAC Tender with a honking great sensor array to detect targets.
As I said, these are hardly optimised designs in the first place, and you'd have to think about how they fitted into your fleet doctrine quite carefully, but there are occasions when they could be very handy. SFB notes that the Fi-Con concept never worked out very well in general there either
>> avoid detection until you reach the fighters deployment range
Yes, FAC Tender jumps in to an enemy system, drops the FACs and runs, FACs deliver the fighters to strike range, then pick up the fighters and run back to the JP. The only cap ship spends about a minute in system. If you can mount FAC bays on commercial ships, you could stage the group waaay out in the middle of nowhere, without maintenance worries
Just checked, hangar bays cannot be mounted on commercial ships, however, you can mount maintenance modules on commercial ships, and 5 modules would only be 25000 tons, along with a ton of fuel storage, and you have a mobile FAC Fi-Con. Or a Fi-Con-Con