New Battlecruiser vs Old

[RevanTheFireMage]

Alright this is a battle between sluggers between the Empire and the First Order, who would win in a fight? A Praetor II battlecruiser (http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Praetor_Mark_II-class_battlecruiser), or a Resurgent class? (battlecruiser http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Resurgent-class_Battlecruiser)
And before everyone immediately says Praetor for it's size, remember the Resurgent is a very well armored and well defended fighter carrier. Cuss and Discuss as you will

[tlmiller]

Praetor has over a mile more space for weapons.  And it's better looking.

[RevanTheFireMage]

That is true but the Praetor's have around 200 turbolasers where as a resurgent has 1,500. So yeah.

[tlmiller]

Different universes...if the Praetor is brought into the disneyverse it could well have 3000....

[RevanTheFireMage]

That is very true but the Resurgent was a very rare vessel and so that's why they were so very well armed and the well armed ones were for high ranking officials.

[Slornie]

That is true but the Praetor's have around 200 turbolasers where as a resurgent has 1,500. So yeah.

You're comparing apples and oranges.  Resurgent is 1,500 turbolasers and ion cannons (of unspecified types), whereas Praetor II is 140 turbolaser and ion cannon batteries (various types).  Even if you take the generous definition (by Star Wars standards) of a battery consisting 10 guns then Resurgent would become 150 batteries.  Both classes carry approx. 2 wings of starfighters as well.

And beyond the pure numbers game you have to consider that the Resurgent is potentially 50 years newer than the Praetor II, with all the developments in weapon, shield and armour technologies that took place over that time (and through two galactic conflicts, Clone Wars and GCW).  All in all, Praetor is bigger but not necessarily more powerful.

[HobbesHurlbut]

Resurgent with the kyber crystal upgrade has firepower equal to the Executor SSD.

[GreyStar]

Resurgent with the kyber crystal upgrade has firepower equal to the Executor SSD.

This honestly sounds like the Disney writers are just First Order fanboys, with bad writing.

[HobbesHurlbut]

This honestly sounds like the Disney writers are just First Order fanboys, with bad writing.

But Thrawn could have been so proud of them if only they didn't build the Starkiller Base and just give the khyber crystal upgrade to the new Star Destroyer fleet!

Not all of the resurgent star destroyers got the upgrade; Finalizer is one of the few that did.

[GreyStar]

It's not a question of whether or not a fictional character would approve, it's a question of scale. I have a hard time believing that a kyver crystal reactor upgrade could take a ship that's 1/6th of the Executor's size and give equivlant firepower.

[RevanTheFireMage]

Well the Deathstar used a single, very large, kyber crystal in it's reactor to give power to the superlaser, so there has to be a lot of power behind kyber crystals. And I do believe that the Resurgent could well take on an executor with the right modifications

[Mr.Puerto]

It's not a question of whether or not a fictional character would approve, it's a question of scale. I have a hard time believing that a kyver crystal reactor upgrade could take a ship that's 1/6th of the Executor's size and give equivlant firepower.

See there was a great project called the Death Star that used get this kyber crystals! Anyway sarcasm aside size doesn't really mean power, if you look at modern Navies that's why no one uses battleships anymore. They're way too big and not needed since they wouldn't be useful in modern naval warfare.
Even going back to the interwar period you had the Washington Naval Treaty between the US, UK, and Japan limiting the size of ships to prevent a "Naval Arms Race." This had the opposite affect and made it so smaller ships had a lot more firepower than before.
So its completely in the realm of possibilities that a smaller ship could have the power of a SSD given the proper upgrades

[HobbesHurlbut]

See there was a great project called the Death Star that used get this kyber crystals! Anyway sarcasm aside size doesn't really mean power, if you look at modern Navies that's why no one uses battleships anymore. They're way too big and not needed since they wouldn't be useful in modern naval warfare.
Even going back to the interwar period you had the Washington Naval Treaty between the US, UK, and Japan limiting the size of ships to prevent a "Naval Arms Race." This had the opposite affect and made it so smaller ships had a lot more firepower than before.
So its completely in the realm of possibilities that a smaller ship could have the power of a SSD given the proper upgrades

Looks at USS Iowa's Displacement (57k tonnage) and then looks at Nimitz's Displacement (+100k tonnages)*.
Er the battleship "disappeared" because
1. At the time (40s-50s), it was very manpower intensive and well....very capital investment-intensive (why only major nations ever built them, though a few minor powers purchased them in the Age of Steel Warships (1890s-1940s)
2. the Carrier eclipsed it....and the battleship could not damage it in return (thank airplanes for your long reach!) is the major reason

[Mr.Puerto]

Looks at USS Iowa's Displacement (57k tonnage) and then looks at Nimitz's Displacement (+100k tonnages)*.
Er the battleship "disappeared" because
1. At the time (40s-50s), it was very manpower intensive and well....very capital investment-intensive (why only major nations ever built them, though a few minor powers purchased them in the Age of Steel Warships (1890s-1940s)
2. the Carrier eclipsed it....and the battleship could not damage it in return (thank airplanes for your long reach!) is the major reason

I didn't expand on the battleship thing, but yeah some carriers can be smaller than battleships. But have much more power than a battleship because like you said the range, and Airplanes can be designed to have way more uses than a couple huge turrets.
The newest amphibious assault ships which are technically classified as carriers displace around 46K tons so smaller than those battleships. The French Carrier called the Charles de Gaulle displaces a similar amount.

[HobbesHurlbut]

I didn't expand on the battleship thing, but yeah some carriers can be smaller than battleships. But have much more power than a battleship because like you said the range, and Airplanes can be designed to have way more uses than a couple huge turrets.
The newest amphibious assault ships which are technically classified as carriers displace around 46K tons so smaller than those battleships. The French Carrier called the Charles de Gaulle displaces a similar amount.

Um....Iowa was one of the biggest battleships in the 40s. And the London Naval Conference and Washington Naval Treaties in the InterWar peroid limited new battleships to 35k tonnages... your amphibious carriers happen to rival or outweigh almost all of the Treaty Battleships....

[Mr.Puerto]

Um....Iowa was one of the biggest battleships in the 40s. And the London Naval Conference and Washington Naval Treaties in the InterWar peroid limited new battleships to 35k tonnages... your amphibious carriers happen to rival or outweigh almost all of the Treaty Battleships....

Okay bad example well lets look at the Zumwalt class destroyer it displaces 14k tons, it could easily take out a battleship. My point is size doesn't really matter in terms of combat power

[HobbesHurlbut]

Okay bad example well lets look at the Zumwalt class destroyer it displaces 14k tons, it could easily take out a battleship. My point is size doesn't really matter in terms of combat power

And the Treaty cruisers used to be capped at 10k tonnage. 

[kucsidave]

Between Praetor and Resurgent I would say Resurgent for sure.
Even if they would have the exact same size, weapon number and fighter number the resurgent would still win.
Reason?
IT IS NEWER!
Technology advances, meaning that even if they have the same number of weapons, the Resurgent which is newer, must have either a reload time, or damage advantage. Or maybe it has better cooling therefore it's salvos can last longer.
In fighters too. We know that the FO used TIEs with shields, so that is also a win for the FO. Even if the numbers are smaller, but they are still as manuverable if not even more so than the imperial counterparts, and even if an imperial gets lucky and hits it, the shield will protect the craft
no matter how we look at it, FO wins.

[Pali]

Okay bad example well lets look at the Zumwalt class destroyer it displaces 14k tons, it could easily take out a battleship. My point is size doesn't really matter in terms of combat power

Go through the trouble of equipping a WWII-era battleship with modern engines, reactors, radar, and weapons (or go the cheaper route and just build a modern BB) and I would happily place money on it defeating a Zumwalt.  It'll have far more space to maintain anti-missile weaponry for self-defense, and could overwhelm a Zumwalt's defenses with its own missile barrages.  Now, could one take on, say, four Zumwalts acting in concert - effectively its mass in Zumwalts?  I doubt it.

What a modern battleship would not be is cost-effective for nearly all modern missions, which is the actual reason we don't build them - if we're going to sink that much money and resources into a ship, we may as well just crank out another super-carrier.  We don't even build proper cruisers anymore, because destroyers and smaller ships serve just fine as missile platforms to support and defend carriers. Edit: and Star Wars tech has definitively NOT followed this development pattern, instead remaining WWII-inspired.

Star Wars tech may have advanced between VI and VII, but it doesn't seem to have gone through anything close to the multiple generation changes in technology we have in the last seventy years - they may be using better turbolasers and shields, but then again, they may not given how static technology is in the Star Wars universe.  I say this remains an unfair comparison.

[Revanchist]

The Praetor would easily win, because the Resurgent doesn't exist in real canon. So if a real ship fights an imaginary fanon ship the real ship would obviously win.