To respond to a number of posts here, the Vesuvius certainly *was* an impressive ship. It was the most cutting edge carrier around when it was christened. Certainly it was impressive enough to make Tolwyn think that it would have put the "fear of God" in the Kilrathi. While it was just a vain quote on the Admirals part, it also signifies that it was far in advance to anything in the Kilrathi war. The principal purpose of a carrier is the deployment of fighters and the Vesuvius, with its large complement, perfectly fulfills that. As a ship it had, it had incredible mobility, defenses, and offensive weaponry. This is not counting what kind of internal systems it had. It was a nice ship.
As for the Kilrathi dreadnaiught, well...it was nice enough to threaten the entire Landreich...all of ConFed for that matter. And actually, we have never seen a dreadnaught get destroyed.
Saying that the Vesuvius class ships only got destroyed all the time is non-sense. We have seen them fight only twice--in WC4 and Secret Ops. In WC4, the fact that the Vesuvius and even the St. Helens (considering that it was not even fully completed) lasted as long as they did in the battle shows just how tough these ships were. In Secret Ops it was an in-engine cutscene. Obviously the battle could not have been portrayed totaly accurate. Plus, the Vesuvius is not a battleship or cruiser and was not as cutting edge anymore. The Plunketts and even Midway, despite what the battles people believe, were more advanced.
I also do not agree with all those SpaceBattles people that think that the Vesuvius is some kind of omnipotent battleship/carrier, but the Vesuvius was an advanced carrier. Sure you could destroy it with two torpedoes in the game itself. But I do not think this should be taken to seriously. The fact that they were considering using the Flash-Pak on it proves it was stronger than the average carrier.