ahh man, it's ganna be hard breaking that to my brother, i'll have to make something to impress him then
Give the carrier a turret in units.dat and it should work along with some other changes that are needed for that. Compare the entries for the carrier and a unit with a turret in units.dat, images.dat, and iscript.bin. I haven't actually tried giving the carrier an attack and keeping the carrier graphic (I changed the graphic entry in units.dat to the battlecruiser one), but if you set up the carrier graphic properly it should work without needing to change the carrier unit's graphic to something else.
Of course, if you just want a simple fix, just simply change the carrier unit's graphic to one that does work (battlecruiser, wraith, plus some others).
sounds sum what complicated, but then thats what I said about modding altogether, i'll give it a shot later today (as its 2:20AM for me) Thx in advance