would it make more sense to go for a Battlestar Galactica route of a fleet of much smaller ships?
my suggestion and 0,02 Cr worth:
the core of the refugee fleet is the planets old merchant marine, several dozen vessels that were built as mass cargo haulers and fled the planet stuffed to the gunnels with people.....and as much portable wealth as they could grab before the Zhods turned up. these days, they have had parts of their old cargo holds turned into proper living quarters, but still have significant cargo space, part of which is still full of treasure, part of which is full of supplies to help the motherworld (which suffered a short but
brutal bombardment in the war). part of the ships holds are empty and used for normal trading, which helps subsidise the fleets running costs.
added to this fleet, by various means, are a few dedicated passenger ships, a half dozen small escorts, and the Imperial navy's contribution: a
Azhanti High Lightning class cruiser, an older warship, saved form decommissioning to become the fleets flagship, and the core of the worlds new system fleet.
if you want, you could have it modified to fit it's new role. retask some of the fuel tanks and you could add in extras like a flag bridge, extra quarters, a bigger marine complement, more hanger space for utility shuttles and such, while not giving up too much (as leader the fleet, it's not going to be making many 5 parsec jumps, as all it takes is one slower ship to make that impossible, so shortening your legs won't be too much of an issue) it's big enough to be a serious threat to most things, but not so big that it will steamroll any potential adversary. it's got a fighter wing for all sorts of old school dogfighting shenanigans as well.
with a fleet of smaller ships kicking about, you can have a large population for politicking and such, and you can afford to have the occasional ship get destroyed for drama if you need it to.
