Star Wars is filled with martial glory. Lightsaber duels. Armies of droids, clones, stormtroopers, and Rebels. Perhaps most importantly, dogfights, whose time in the light of real life martial glory has come and gone, much like the dueling samurai who inspired Lucas's lightsaber duels.

Space combat is filled with wedge shaped capital ships, exploding Death Stars, and the starfighters that ultimately defeat all of them.

Everybody loves starfighters. Well, except for the Imperials, who own the wedge shaped ships and Death Stars that keep getting blown up.

These tiny ships kick serious tail. This presents problems for the poor Imperials. An X-Wing is about half a millionth of the size of an Imperial Star Destroyer. It costs 1/25,000th as much, and has 1/37,000th the crew.

One Star Destroyer isn't as dangerous in a fight as 25,000 Rebel fighters. 25 starfighters might be able to take it out; 250 would be overkill at a thousandth the cost to build and crew and a little over 0.01% of the displacement.

Heck, if Wedge had 250 good starfighters at the Second Battle of Coruscant, he almost certainly would have nailed the Lusyanka then and there, and that's a Super Star Destroyer.

Sure, there are some things that capital ships are useful for - like supplying and repairing fighters and transporting big loads of troops - but in the vacuum between worlds and the Wars of Stars, the starfighter is the king of combat and a bargain at any price.

Anyone who tells you otherwise, IMO, is either up to no good or doesn't grasp the essence of Star Wars.