In WW1 terms a light cruiser was in fact a very lightly armed cruiser in the 5000 ton range, the where like their cavalry brethren used primarly for scouting and keeping contact with the enemy, while screening the bigger ships from the opposing sides light forces.

They had light to almost no armor and used their speed and agility to avoid getting hit. Main armament was from multible 4" guns to a handfull of 6" guns, depending of type.

The closest to the Heavy cruiser term in WW1 was the Armoured Cruiser, the tonnage was everything from 8000 tons to almost 15000 tons. A typical armoured cruiser main armament was a few heavy guns from 8" in size and upwards placed fore and aft, with multible 6" guns or lighter in casemate implacements on the broadside, the latter was unfortunately next to useless in high seas.

Being of slower speed, almost as large as a old battleship if not larger, with a crew of roughly equal size and less agile with relativ poor armor, these ships had a poor record, when engaged in battle with slightly more mordern warships of the era (+1 years)

The mix in the main armament of medium and heavy guns, sometimes made spotting of shots difficult as the shellsplashes from the two types of guns looked alike.

And the destruction of several Armored Cruisers at Falklands and Jutland by the hands of Battleships and Battle Cruisers hammered through the sad fact that this type of ship was illsuited for the new modern 20th century naval combat.

3 hours ago, Democratus said:

Classically, with battleships, there are pre-dreadnought and post-dreadnought. This is based on whether the design was created before or after HMS Dreadnought.

Battlecruisers are an aberration of battleship firepower on cruiser armor and speed. Maybe a VSD with Spinal armament and would qualify.

The more I think about it, the more I think the VSD ought to be classified as a pre-dreadnought battleship.

Not only were they slower, but their armour was qualitatively worse than an equivalent thickness of armour developed a few years later.

And there were a few predreadnoights still in use even at the start of WWII (Schleswig-Holstein) - and VSD are supposed to be obsolescent.

I'd like to thank everyone for the Wikipedia rabbit hole I just went down based on the HMS Dreadnought .

In general military craft designations are a mix of current military doctrine, tradition, and bull (like how the F-117 is a 'fighter' that can only perform bombing missions).

So the simplest explanation for why there'd be a light cruiser and a light carrier without corresponding heavies, is that the Empire considers anything that isn't a Star Destroyer a "light craft" suitable only for filling in when a Star Destroyer is unavailable. (mix of doctrine and bull)

Another possibility is at some point the Old Republic had light and heavy ships of all sorts and the Empire still uses elements of that classification system. (tradition)

When your Light meter fills up you can use your Super ability, but sometimes Oryx drains your light and you can't Super at all. Increasing your intelligence makes you Light regenerate faster.