Old-ish thread but the issue still persists. If you go to /workshop/content/394360/3350890356/common/units/equipment/ship_hull_carrier.txt
you can see that for carrier_2, carrier_3, etc, the default module for fixed_ship_engine_slot will be something like carrier_ship_engine_n1, carrier_ship_engine_n2 and so on.
But in
units/equipment/modules/00_ship_modules.txt
these modules don't exist. All you need to do is remove the "n" from these equipment names so you're left with carrier_ship_engine_1, carrier_ship_engine_2 which do exist. After doing this I was able to construct all of the carriers. Hopefully this is something the devs patch at some point. Can't imagine this would still be an issue if man the guns is enabled, though.

Update:
I built 4 carriers but they didn't spawn in. I also notice that in the tech tree there is no option to see the 3D model for carriers, no other ship has this issue. No idea what the problem is. I'll update again if I figure it out.

Update:
Okay I got carriers to spawn and it shows the 3D model so it should all be working now.
I went to error.log and saw the following error:

Error: "Malformed token: carrier_1, near line: 704" in file: "common/units/equipment/ship_hull_carrier.txt" near line: 704

So in ship_hull_carrier.txt go to ~line 704 and you'll see the following lines in the "helicopter_carrier_2" block:

fixed_ship_deck_slot_1 = inherit
fixed_ship_deck_slot_2 = inherit
fixed_ship_anti_air_slot = inherit
fixed_ship_radar_slot = inherit

Now for reasons I don't understand, you cannot use the keyword "inherit" here. I just removed these lines and everything works well now. I'll update again if any more issues arise.

Carriers and any othertipe of Ships in TFR are literally s''t just SPAM SUBMARINES