It is graet fun
How many Base ships in the Cylon fleet, tough question. But my estimate would be not as many as most fans would expect. The reason being they just did not need that many. Being a machine race Baseships would be needed to provide long-range transport for fighters. Then act as a service center for local operations until a base can be built. We see in the battle at Cimtar, fighters can operate far from any base with only tanker support, in-flight refueling. The Humans need Battlestars for pilot support. Pilots need to rest, eat, and do the other things Cylon warriors do not need to do.
In the attack we see three Baseships orbiting Caprica and it is implied there are three around the other two inner worlds, for a total of nine Baseships.. After the planets defenses are defeated these Baseship regroup and attack the outer worlds (9 of them). The implication here is, they are lesser worlds with minimal defenses, one Baseship each is be enough.
Then the Cylons with draw. I would assume they are regrouping, recovering the fighters from the attack on the fleet and joining up with the transports carrying the troops assigned to occupy the Colonial home worlds. This would be the right move. Especially if the Cylons have a limit on the number of forces available to them. This combined force would then proceed to invade the Colonial home worlds. Now had the Fleet not been destroyed but only beaten up then the Cylons would have enough firepower to prevent the fleet from stopping the invasion on their home worlds. Either way Humanity in that part of the universe is toast.
The fact that the Imperious leader had to take his ship to Carillon also implies they were short on Baseships.
Later in Living Legend it is obvious the local Cylons do not have a Baseship but rather are depending on fighter-tanker escort groups to cover convoys of supplies. It is only when Baltar arrives do the Cylons have Baseships on site.
Assuming only 9, just for the sake of argument, one is destroyed at Carillon and two at Gamoray. That leaves 6 to cover the Colonial home worlds and pursue the Galactica. And the sixty-four dollar question is would they need more? And if so how fast can they be built and how many would they need?
One thing to remember these machines (Battlestars and Baseships) are going to be very costly in resources to build.
Just as a point of reference, a modern Aircraft Carrier take 8 years to build. A Battlestar has a proximately 560 time the volume of a modern Carrier. If we extrapolate that out based just on volume it would be reasonable to see it take 15 to 20 years to build a Baseship or Battlestar. With that kind of gestation time you would expect to see very old ships remain in operation as long as they were effective. IMO
