Originally posted by ChaosTheory123
I'm not doubting they were surpassed, but its hard to determine how significant the advancement of tech in Star Wars is from era to eraThe better feats of a given eras capital ships generally appear to land around the same ball park as far as I've seen and all :hmm
It should be noted that the size of ships do steadily increase.
The Hammerhead class cruiser was a mainstay and perfectly normal in size for a ship of the line when it was introduced in the Old Sith Wars at 315, and bigger than the Old Sith Empire's 215 meter Derriphan-class vessels that stayed around til Revan's time, getting some print runs on the Star Forge (and the Derriphan lacked shields, even! At least at first).
Leviathan/Interdictor-class ships came out a bit later during the Mandalorian wars and at 600 meters served as flagships but did become ships of the line, and the 1,200 Centurion class was the rare-and-powerful large command ship.
In the TOR era, the Harrower class was introduced and noted as being a big step forward in Warship design. It was 800 meters long and the biggest mass produced ship out there, requiring groups of Hammerheads to take on, and now we have a ship of the line bigger than the prior big flagship.
By the Clone Wars, the Venator was a solid new ship at 1,137 meters long, notably bigger and tougher than a Harrower- as were it's foes. Notably, this is also around when giant super-flagships start cropping up, like the CIS's 4,845 meter Subjugator heavy cruiser.
The Venator was soon surpassed by Imperial Star Destroyers a few years later, at 1,600 meters long. Super flagships were often 8km, and sometimes as much as 19km. Ships the same size as, and even with some design influences from, the Hammerhead, are now in a mere 'frigate' role and only are used against the SDs in groups (Nebulon-B). Clearly, they had gotten better at building big, and ships were stronger.
And by Legacy, things started to progress a bit differently as there was an emphasis on more compact ships, especially by the Galactic Alliance. The Pellaeon class of the Fel Empire was a bit shorter than an ISD but bulkier, the Imperious class a bit bigger but still in that size range and considered the best ship around, the 2+km 'Dragon ships', and they often went against Scythe-class ships about 1/3rd the length of the Pellaeon (so, smaller than a Harrower!) who, due to a combination of advances in turbolaser technology (more rapid fire) and a designed based on focus fire, they were able to take on the larger ships.
Or to put it another way, late-era ships resemble giant flagships from earlier era, until you get to Grand Alliance Legacy ships, which merely pack the firepower of early-era flagships in tiny packages, said 'tiny' packages still being bigger than the early-era line ships.
SW doesn't really jump massively in firepower and toughness, but there's enough clear advances seen during eras (introduction of Harrower, Venator-to-ISD, introduction of the compact-powerful Scythes, etc.) that incremental increase is clearly there and later ships are definitely both bigger than their past counterparts on average and, eventually, pound for pound stronger than early ones. You can do most of the same things with the older ships, you just need more of them, they're less tough and have less gun.
And, looping all~l the way back to the Ratakans, I'm pretty sure their ships were smaller than the Hammerheads, though very likely stronger due to the pound-for-pound edge of the force tech (but still definitely fightable with Hammerheads)... and from the above progression, you should note that makes them smaller than, and likely very significantly outgunned by, the 'small and compact' Scythe class ships of Legacy.