Originally posted by Wulf
I remember reading Action Stations about how battleships were designed to carry powerful enough weaponry to penetrate phase shielding. I am pretty certain a single fighter, even in Prophecy's time, could equate the power of a battleship. The above theory would be a good explanation had it not been for the literature. My explanation would be that programmers did what they did with the shields from a gameplay standpoint; ships were too easy to kill in WC1, so make it harder in WC2. WC3's capships had a substantial amount of anti-fighter weaponry, so maybe having ships only be destroyed by torpedo would have been too challenging for some.
Sure, fighters can have the firepower of a battleship. The question is how old is the battleship, and how new is the fighter?
Seriously, though, there is probably going to be a perpetual race between firepower and shielding. On the one hand, you've got the constantly evolving shield technology that allows ships to survive constant barrages from various weapons. During WC2, its at one of its peak moments, and in WC3 and 4, shielding falls behind in the race.
On the other hand, you have your weapons, which researchers are constantly attempting to make as potent as possible. The itty-bitty laser (little guy gun since WC1) is at the bottom range of the scale, while the plasma gun on the Devestator (which is the only fighter mounted weapon in WCP that can punch through shields) is at the other. During WCP, shielding has once again taken the lead over weapons, although the existance of the plasma gun hints that weapons may be once again surging to the front.
Remember that the combat ships from WC2 on tend to carry anti-matter guns, and in WC2, those were capable of killing a fighter with a single hit. A starship will always be able to mount heavier weapons than a fighter for two reasons. The first is space. A ship can have bigger hardpoints than a fighter can. Its like comparing the 20mm cannon on most US modern fighters with the 16in guns on an Iowa class battleship. The second is power draw. Since WC guns normally use energy, the amount of energy available to power the gun is going to be an issue. Bigger ships have bigger powerplants, meaning that bigger energy blasts can be unleashed.