[Norsehound]

If I can drop some thoughts into this old discussion...

In my mind I always presumed Battlestars were huge pillars of Colonial construction designed to withstand the thousand-year war, maybe to match base ships or maybe not. Either way they came halfway in the war to turn the tide and managed to do a good job in doing so. One colony built each of them as a show of solidarity but attrition has taken its toll, and now the colonies are down to 5 (Well 7 really... including the Pegasus and the Prometheus from the hypothetical season 2).

Being that Battlestars are all-important fighting symbols naturally there's a fleet to do the grunt work and all the things that would be wasted on sending a Battlestar. Likely they were elsewhere in Saga, either on furlon or out on patrol. Given the disposition of the quorum I don't think anyone would disagree presuming the President immediately dropped to lax security since he fully believed in Baltar's deliverance of peace.

I also had the impression that the Cylon empire was very big. So big that their base ships matched the Galactic Empire's Star Destroyers in numbers. But the reason they didn't swarm humanity is that humanity was a very difficult enemy to overcome and no swarm attack would gain enough momentum to succeed (sabotaged by humans and their cleverness). They used the ruse of the peace in order to isolate the Battlestars and human leadership and crush them in a decisive blow. Baltar perhaps showed them how easily humans can be duped, so when the Cylons threw the punch they threw to get the best crunch out of it.

I believe there are military vessels in the Rag-Tag fleet, but with each one crammed with survivors their efficiency for military operations is drastically reduced. This of course after the cylons blew up every ground-based military outpost and starport with all the vessels and ships parked there.