[Erax]

The reason why aircraft carriers have ruled the seas since WWII is that seagoing ships are vulnerable to torpedoes.

Before the carrier battles in the Pacific, the rationale for building bigger ships was that a bigger ship could carry bigger guns, which would have a longer range and therefore be able to destroy a smaller ship before its guns were able to fire. Torpedo boats changed all that, because they could harm a large ship and were too manoeuverable to be tracked by the big guns.

So a battleship would be surrounded by destroyers, which would fire at any incoming torpedo boats before they could attack the main ship.

Airplanes were a new variation on the torpedo boat concept, and they were so successful that they rendered the battleship obsolete. The modern counter for them is the Aegis cruiser.

So if you want a game universe in which carriers rule the spacelanes, you need a sci-fi equivalent for torpedoes, which is small enough to be carried aboard your starfighters. The Star Wars universe has this, which is not surprising since the concept behind SW space battles has always been 'WWII in space'.