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The Venator class star destroyer was the main capital ship used by the Republic during the clone wars. It was a great ship when used correctly, but it seems that many people seem to overstate its effectiveness. This by no means makes it a bad ship, but it is somewhat overrated. I'll be going through some of the specifications of the Venator, drawing primarily from Legends, since it's the most comprehensive data set.
Size: The Venator is a fairly typical-sized capital ship sitting comfortably at 1137m in length, 548m wide, and 268m tall. There's not really much to say here, since it's a fairly normal size for a capital ship.
Engines: This is something that most people never mention about the Venator, despite the fact that it's ludicrously fast. It has a class 1 hyperdrive, allowing it to cross the galaxy at a break-neck pace, thus allowing it to respond to immediate threats virtually instantly. This is best exemplified by the battle of Coruscant, where Venators from across the galaxy reinforced the planet within hours. This speed allowed the Republic to deal a crushing blow to the CIS navy. In atmosphere, the Venator flies at 975km/h, which is quite fast, but not unusual. It seems that most capital ships have similar atmospheric speeds. In open space, Venators have 3000G of acceleration, making them insanely fast in a straight line. This allows them to launch surprise attacks from within star systems and more importantly, keep up with their fighters.
Weapons: Venators were equipped with eight DBY-827 heavy dual turbolaser turrets, two medium dual turbolaser cannons, fifty-two point-defense dual laser cannons or turbolasers, and four heavy proton torpedo tubes. This armament is impressive, but it lacks a few key weapons needed in naval combat. Critically it lacks ion cannons and tractor beams. This means that while it has the turbolasers to damage and destroy lighter frigates, its ability to damage larger battleships and battlecruisers is somewhat hampered. The lack of tractor beams means that it has to fully rely on its point-defence systems and fighters to stop fighters as it has no way to slow down approaching fighters. Additionally without ion weapons, it is unable to make precision shots to disable critical systems. This doesn't seem very important, until you need to capture something or someone (like Cad Bane in that episode of the clone wars). While its weapons are good, the Venator seems to lack a lot of the firepower you'd expect from a warship of this size. Many contemperary models boast far more weapons for similar size, like the MonCal Cruiser, the Providence Carrier/destroyer, or the Imperial I class Destroyer. It is true that the Venator's main role was that of a carrier, but even so, this leaves the Republic with no real cruisers.
Defence: The Venator has good enough shielding capabilities, but these seem to fail quite horribly in pitched battles, as the Republic loses scores of Venators to the CIS virtually instantly throughout the clone wars (And I'm not including the Malevolence crisis). Even so, the Venators for the most part are able to take quite a beating and maintain operational integrity. Now it's important to note that the main defence of the Venator is not its shields, but its fighters. The Venator is a carrier first and destroyer second, so it comes it should come as no surprise to anyone if 2 or even 3 non-fighter Venators lose a gun-duel to an ISD 1. This does not seem to be a design flaw with the Venator though, as it is mainly hampered by the output of its reactor which would be lower than that of a more modern design, which would in turn provide less power to its shields.
Doctrine: Now we really shouldn't criticize the Venator here because the Republic admiralty is fully aware of the Venator's shortcomings as a gun battery and knows that the Venator is better suited to being a carrier. This is obvious when you realize that it can carry up to 420 starfighters. This force alone can overpower Trade Federation battleships and Providence carriers. And it seems that when the Venator is deployed with this in mind, it dominates.
Now the problem comes not from the idea behind the Venator, but ironically, it's fighters. Fighters are extremely good in star wars, but when you're trying to beat the CIS at the mass-production of fighters, you're going to lose. The Republic likely has no problems producing its fighters or Venators, but it has problems crewing those fighters with clones. The CIS on the other hand just needs the resources to build the fighters, and not the pilots. This means that over time, the CIS will out-attrition the Republic's fighters and then force the Venators into gun-duels where it will lose. So even though a Venator can carry up to 420 fighters of various types, it's unlikely that they have all of them crewed to maximum capacity since you're losing pilots at astronomical rates. It's true that the Republic could probably just start mixing in its own droid fighters to compliment its piloted ones, but that would look horrible in the Senate. This means that the Republic navy just has to deal with the fact that its carriers won't have enough pilots to be carriers and they will then have to act as cruisers/battleships. Sure the Republic has other ships that have loads of guns on them, like the Victory class and Acclamators, but those are even less armed than the Venator. This is where we get the next phase and perfect compliment to the Venator, The Imperial/Imperator Class. When you look at the ISD through this context, its massive reactor, extensive turbolaser armament, tractor beams, ion cannons, and impenetrable shields begin to make sense. It was designed during the Clone War to compliment the over-worked Venator. This tag-team takes the weight off of the Venator and allows it to use its fighters as its primary armament, while using its point-defence guns to destroy the waves of opposing fighters. The ISD would then act as the shield to the lighter Venator and be able to overpower anything short of a Lucrehulk on its own.
In conclusion, the Venator is an excellent carrier and would only be better if it was deployed alongside its bigger brother-The Imperial Class. Its fighters do the job extremely well, but it cannot be deployed like a conventional capital ship, where it gets overpowered in fleet combat. This carrier was good enough to be used by the Imperial navy for quite some time after the Clone War ended.
TLDR: The Venator is an overworked ship which would probably be viewed even more favorably, had it been tasked with a nice pairing.
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