yes but don't those plans also make reference to something called magnatomic flux chillers!!! And they're meant to be the warp exhausts! In the words of Homer Simpson "you see? Gibberish, it's all gibberish!"
I don't think the thru-deck carriers are as vulnerable as you think, I mean, most of the time when a fed ship has to take a hit on the fore quarter it takes it on the saucer section - which is what it's there for, to take damage without endangering any vital systems coz all that's there is officers and crew quarters so an enemy ship's still got a lot of saucer to eat through unless they can get underneath the ship, in which case they have much better luck just targetting the warp core like Khan did in STII. Also carriers are not the most maneuverable ships and it's more than likely that the enemy could just attack them from behind and take out the rear shuttlebay. Furthermore there is more than likely to be some kind of internal segregation of the forward and aft shuttlebays, probably just a series of interior bulkheads that could seal off the thru-deck at vital points so that if it is hit in such a manner as you describe then the damage will be contained to only the small section near the bay doors where the hit took place. I thikn we all know why you like the Ariel
But for a CVL the Oriskany/Guam (TMP/TOS thru-deck carriers respectively) make more sense than the bloated flatbed carriers from SFB as they are meant to be derivatives on the heavy cruiser hull (invariably the connie ofcourse) it makes sense to me as the only other alternative would be to drastically expand the rear of the secondary hull to accomodate a double length shuttlebay and have bay doors on the port and starboard hulls.
After that display I feel I must reaffirm my blokishness so: did you see Britney kissin Madona at the VMAs yesterday
LOL
Back to the Trek I thought I'd mention something which nobody has probably considered - the Soyuz would make a great new light carrier, think about it, the Miranda as standard has those 2 pretty big bays and the extension on the Soyuz's rear hull seems to be basically a huge hangar (as evidenced by the third bay entrance taking up the whole rear end of the extension) even if we take into acount the space needed for the toroidal tokomak style fusion reactor to power the impulse engines contained in that wedge stuck to the back end it still leave a lot of room for fighters, given the impulse reactor is no longer present in between the 1 and 2 shuttlebays these could be joined to each other and hence to the third main bay giving one hell of a big hangar. Assuming you remove the sensor pods and that plating around the nacelle struts I think it'd make a perfect NVL, then if you added a rollbar with torpedo pod in the usual location as on the Miranda you'd have the perfect NVS!