Originally posted by: PSJ
Eternal is a Clyne faction/three ship alliance ship not a ZAFT ship. You know Lacus got that boat and she ain't with ZAFT.

Let's not forget that ZAFT built Eternal, and thus has the plans for it's engines and such. It's not unlikely that they used or improved on their own design.

As to the battle, EXPERIANCE...

The crew of the Minerva has been through a good number of scuffles and battles, but they mostly started out as well trained rookies, except maybe Talia and Arthur (he's debateable). The ship itself is pretty much still an experiment, it never had a proper shakedown to workout the bugs and things before it was put into service, this is essentially the same as the Archangel was at the beginning, except their crew was almost entirely untrained in operating a ship. The Minerva crew is essentially at a point similar to the Archangel of SEED's last few eps. However the Minerva hasn't had any Yachin Due level battles in space yet. They're only space combat experiance was against one other ship with better tactics which they couldn't take down and against a stationary base with no battleships for defense. The crew has more combat experiance, so by now they ought to know how to react and what to do by instinct not memory.

Unfortunately, the Archangel crew still has far more experiance in Ship-to-Ship combat, especially in space.

While Minerva seemingly has more modern tech, why should we think underwater capability is the only thing they added, but that's speculation...Archangels captain has duked it out with several space capital ships and is still standing, while many of her opponents are not. What is Minerva's kill record? An aircraft carrier that sailed straight at them with no weapons, on Earth. Ramius simply has more knowledge of what to do and not to do in space combat between capital ships. Experiance generally wins over sheer power, (except in Bleach, but that's totally okay)

About the weapons, we've seen that the Tristans and Gottfrieds seem to be pretty much useless against the ablative armors of the two ships. Isolde shots are slow and Valiant's have no range of motion. Only tools actually get hit by positron cannons in the middle of a fight. Basically it'd probobly comedown to missiles, so whoever can use their missiles to the best effect would likely win in the end. (Bajirul Manuver anyone???)