Cap Ships vs. fighters.

[Smalleyjedi]

Another reason. A less powerful ship with more fighters can win. If you take down the enemy's shields, you will be taking damage, but then your fighters/bombers can blow off their weapons emplacements unless they have the ASF weaponry.

[Darth Yoshi]

As for why you need anti-fighter weapons, read Bacta War. Several squadrons of fighters and dozens of freighters had to fire on the Lusankya with torps at the same time to take out the shields. The torp count was 80 at once. Light weapon emplacements have less mass, so they can turn faster, allowing them to track missiles. Also, immune means immune in a one-on-one, not one on 144 (Fighter complement of ISD Mk II, I think.)

[Smiling Bandit]

Bombers. Is there a reason why everyone assumes that fighters are the best thing to hit capships with? People use them because they are accurate and fast and cheap, but that does not mean that bombers could not be effective.

WHile John's error continues, I point out that while under fire, your lovely Immune aircraft carrier will not be working right. Additionally, with not point-defense weapnry, they are super-vulnerable to bombers.

I'm surpised I didn't see anyone put this out? While you can (and in SW, they do) put fighters or fighter/bombers up against heavier targets, the best bet is accurate missile and bomb hits from dedicated craft.

The Tie Bomber is one such craft. The B-Wing ranks as a fighter/bomber.

[Mr Bean]

Not to mention you can always strap heaver bombs on Fighters, Just because the Torps on the avarge X-Wing are pretty low yield thats like saying that just because and F-16 Carrys Sparrow Missiles theres no way it could carry Harpon's to Sink Battleships (Yes I know somone else already said this but its a good example)
I'm thinking the main problem that AA never got around to saying was that the Torps they where carriying where of the Anti-Ship Varaity not the Anti-fighter varaity(Heck everyone does this, Why make missles with thousand pound bombs attacked to kill fighters when a five pound bomb and a load of shrapnal will do the same thing?)

[Master of Ossus]

Darth Garden Gnome, re-read the novel, and see if it was in there. If it was, were the shields down?

The hardest part of a fighter destroying a capship would be overloading the shields. Shielding is measured in watts, and starfighter weapons are insufficient to overload the shields.

Anakin destroyed the Trade Federation ship by flying in the hangar while the shields were down. When the say "immune to fighter attack, I think they mean "immune from the outside".

More importantly, against unshielded ships, torpedoes and other weapons can do large amounts of damage to tiny areas. Shields help nullify their ability to slag a small section of the ship, in a way, spreading out the impact and preventing localized damage. Starfighters are quite potent against a capital ship, once its shields are gone. The rest of my explanations for the prevalence of anti-starfighter weapons on SW capital ships still stands (actually, none of it was ever really threatened.).

[AL]

I don't really want to get into this but, Saxton's Novel Ref part of his page talks about the destruction of the imperial communications ship, from ROTJ novel. It had just finished blowing away a Mon Cal Cr, but it lost its shields in the process. Lando and a group of fighters dove in and destroyed this already damaged and unshielded ship.

Now, point defense weapons on a cs must be a must. If a capital ship lost its shields it can be hurt or even destroyed by fighter attack.

I urge everyone to read this on Saxton's page, its really cool, if you havent already or if you dont have the novel on hand.