You lose 100% of the battles to which you never arrive: a repudiation of Big Ship Doctrine in favor of Pack Predator Doctrine.
The ongoing assumption of Imperial fleet doctrine has been that colossal capital ships will be the central figure, typically with escort cruisers or a fighter screen to prevent an enemy from getting inside the defenses of said ships. These give battles a central focus for ships to concentrate around. They also leave blind spots you can fly a freighter through.
"The best defense is making your enemies unsure of where to strike; the best offense is making your enemies unsure of where to defend" -
Pers Pradeux.
An illusion of invincibility only needs to be shattered once before it is worthless. Capital ships provide aspiring criminals, terrorists, and fringe polities with kilometer-long "hard" targets. More importantly, however, their expense provides enormous areas where there is no defense between criminals or terrorists and "soft" targets. An illusion of fear need only find foes less concerned by fear than their goals to cease carrying value, and it needs a certain degree of investment in ensuring that the long arm of the law does inevitably catch up with them.
If the Empire is to advance the cause of peace and order, then I propose a different solution: multiple squadrons of hyperspace-capable seek-and-destroy strike fighters in each sector able to respond to threats almost immediately, creating the illusion of being everywhere all at once and making potential foes think twice before attacking. Far less expensive than any capital ship, operating with interchangeable parts that can be made anywhere, the values of such a defense force are manifold.
-Ease of maintenance: common and inexpensive parts allow for the Empire to make use of economies of scale as yet unexplored. Any sufficiently-industrialized world can produce parts for these fighters and supply their sector defense force.
-Ease of recruitment and training: any capable pilot can be recruited and trained to fly a fighter to defend their home. Propaganda teams can have a field day with this one.
-Ease of swift response and swift escalation: Distress calls and emergent situations can be answered by scrambling a squadron of fighters. Larger situations can lead to more squadrons being pulled from gradually larger response areas to swarm over any threat until it is destroyed.
-Ease of location: Hyperspace-capable seek-and-destroy fighters would only require a small supply depot / repair hangar to operate from and thus could be positioned anywhere, allowing for strategically important locations to have hangars all their own. If desired, a hangar could even be placed on an unindustrialized world and maintained with regular supply shipments.
Capital ships could then be reserved as the "heavy end of the hammer" for issues poorly suited to the use of fighters and allowing them to be more specialized exclusively towards destroying large ships while also ensuring they remain shrouded in mystery to better assure the appropriate fear response to their arrival.
To claim the galaxy as territory of the Empire and back that claim with hordes of "pack predator" starfighters is the surest means to peace and order in the galaxy.
A/N:
Though there are almost certainty many retorts here, case in point the issue of covering so much area, and the reliance on their enemies not acquiring the means to produce fightercraft somehow. Like, say, snagging the design of a heavily economical strike fighter from the defecting designers of said design.
Well, if you're going to tee it up for me like that...
Pers Pradeux is generally considered one of the fathers of the Republic and later Imperial Navy, so I figured dropping a Sun Tzu quote in his mouth made sense and thus quoting him would have a similar sort of effect.
