while I do believe a movie should stand on it’s own , there is a 30 year gap between the OT and the ST .A lot can happen in that time . The Novel Bloodline by Claudia Gray goes a long way to explain how the First Order was funded . It also deals with the reaction of the New Republic after Leia is finally outed as the daughter of Darth Vader …http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Bloodline_(novel)
Yeah, I read all about it. I still call bullshit on the FO’s rise to power.
I posted on a different thread that the First Order should have been portrayed as employing guerilla warfare, espionage which would encompass infiltration, sleeper agents and what have you, conquering seemingly unimportant worlds, using Imperial technology derived from unused prototypes (the dreadnought at the beginning of TLJ could have been used as a sort of ghost ship that strikes from the shadows). You get the point.