I'd disagree on PA's fighters sucking. Tie Terror's can do just about anything rather well. The tie variants from the Praetor 2C and Secutor are also good. Granted, I still disagree with the Praetor 2C costing more population than the regular Praetor 2.

The problem is that Ton-Falks, the bread-and-butter carrier, only has basic bombers and tie fighters. They don't have a pure carrier that carries their best unit, so you might get better results if you go alter the spawns for PA's carriers to have more of their unique variants. This can be changed in scripts>library>eawx-mod-icw>gameobjects, where you can find lua files for each space unit's auxiliary craft spawns.

Changing what researches do, iirc, is a bit complex. Besides, Eriadu has shielded ties as it thematically fits with them being centered around slower, fewer, but tougher units. PA is more about swarming: building a fleet around secutors or praetor 2's with supporting things like venators and ton falks, and a row of ISD-1's or procursators to handle actual ship-to-ship damaging, and you'll do nicely(ignore the tector; it's the worst ISD variant in the game, imo.)