Capacitors are there to make the response slow, as you are dealing with a massive inductive load, and want slow changes in current. The capacitors slow down the turn on and turn off, the resistor in series limits the rate of change of the high current in the output stage.
How it works is that the alternator warning light provides a small current to the 15 terminal, so the power transistor gets turned on hard, and the rotor gets a small current from the bulb, so it can bootstrap the alternator to provide the excitation voltage on the separate 3 small diodes in the pack parallel with the 3 large diodes connected to the positive output terminal. As the alternator output rises the high current diodes start to feed current into the battery, and the positive side of the small diodes follows this, but isolated from the battery voltage, but tracking it. PNP transistor is then going to start to have base bias removed from it by the zener diode and forward biased diode, with the 3 resistors on the left providing a sample of the voltage to it. In turn as the PNP transistor starts to turn off, slowed down by the 100n capacitor between base and emitter, it starts to turn off the NPN darlington output stage, the base being pulled down to ground. The series capacitor and resistor provide AC feedback so the PNP turnoff is not affected by the noise on the rails much, so that current in the rotor drops, and then it stabilises to around 14V4, with the rotor essentially running with zero current in it, just enough to keep the bridge rectifier conducting slightly to keep the regulator powered. The diodes on the terminals are there because the rotor has a lot of inductance, so the diodes provide a path to clamp it so the inductance of the rotor and wiring does not damage the regulator.
Normally the power diodes in the alternator are designed to break down at around 20-40V across them, for at least the 3 in the positive side, so that if the battery is disconnected, with engine running, the alternator does not attempt to charge into an open circuit, which can easily reach 100V plus on the 12V nominal vehicle wiring. Instead it is clamped roughly to around 40 to 60V, limiting the damage.