i actually think the multitude of ship designs is one of the big underdiscussed flaws of the prequels. in the OT, there were X wings and Tie fighters. obviously there were also A wings, B wings, Y wings, etc...but you could look at a battle and tell whose ships were whose. color probably also played a part in that--the ties were dark blue/black, dark colors, and the rebel ships were all light colored for the most part.

in the prequels, i could not tell you for the life of me the name of any ship on either side. maybe a jedi starfighter i could recognize. otherwise, it's a crapshoot. i can kinda tell the good guys from teh bad, but certainly not in a massive space battle like the one in ROTS. in contrast, i could freeze frame any shot in teh ROTJ battle and tell you the ship name and faction.

the space battles would be so much better if there were only a few ship designs per side that remained mostly consistent throughout the prequels with only occasional and slight additions/changes. an x-wing was still an x-wing in all 3 OT films; the jedi have had, what, at least two different ships?