IMHO, a big driver of carrier size today is actually sortie type, not sortie numbers or aircraft size/numbers. A strike carrier has much more demanding specs than a sea control carrier:
– Longer catapults (90m ideal)
– Larger bow deck park to accommodate returning alpha strikes
– Much larger munitions capacity (which is volume intensive because there are only a limited number of spaces where you can safely fit munitions)
– More demands of air group personnel, meaning larger accomodation spaces
The end result is that a strike carrier needs to be much longer and beamier. ~60,000t is pretty much the minimum these days (see the French PA2 Romeo/PADSX design). The fact that you can carry more aircraft on a carrier that size is almost a side benefit, not a primary driver – to be clear, aircraft parking space is NOT the limiting factor.
By contrast, a pure air defense/sea control carrier can make do with 60m catapults and smaller aircraft packages (perhaps no more than 6-8 aircraft airborne, as on HMAS Melbourne), both of which allow for much smaller deck sizes. And much smaller munitions storage, which allows for a smaller hull. Given that the recovery area size is incompressible, that leaves much less deck space for aircraft parking, which is therefore much more likely to be the limiting factor.
Finally, for the strike mission, smaller naval aircraft such as a Sea Gripen can actually be counter-productive in terms of carrier size, because they tend to have less thrust-to-weight/weaker structure, and hence a reduced take-off & bring-back payload. A larger % of that reduced payload then ends up being eaten by basic mission needs (AAMs, reserve fuel, electronics etc), leaving only a fraction of the smaller aircraft’s payload available for A2G needs.
The extreme example of this is on CdG, where one Rafale can carry as much A2G payload as six Super Etendards! I’m willing to bet that a Su-33 vs. Mig-29K comparison would tell a similar story. You could also compare the A-4M vs. A-7E or F/A-18C vs F/A-18E and see a similar pattern. Basically economies of scale are much more significant for carrier aircraft with high landing stresses and low stall speed requirements, than they are for land-based aircraft.
The Sea Gripen would be much better than a Super Etendard obviously, but I still think that you’d probably need ~60 Gripen to match the payload-range of say 30 Rafale/F-35C/Super Hornet (for strike missions at least), and this would end up driving the carrier size.
All the above is my non-technical amateur’s understanding of course.
On the flipside, modern engines and avionics capabilities allow a lot more plane in a given package. Self escorted strike mission with a pair each of SRAAMs, MRAAMs, drop tanks, and up to 2,000lbs class smart weapons isn’t a slouch. It would give a country like Brazil, Australia, Spain, or India a very credible strike capability at a much more affordable price.
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