The Xzarian Union wrote:Um, can I just butt in here a bit, a lot would depend on the size of your empire and such, for example, let's use some FT and Sci-Fi shows as reference, now in Star Trek, most Trekies (like myself ) estimate that The Federation, has roughly between 6,000, and 6,500 vessels, The Dominion had roughly 10,000, and The Borg had roughly 29,000, The Klingons have 6,000, The Romulans have 5,000 and The Cardassians have about 2,500. So as you can see, you have to judge on not only population, but also amount of space, as well as the type of your species and how you RP it, such as, if you RP something like say The Cardassians, you're going to be about 2,500 - 3,000 ships strong, and if you RP as say..... The Borg, then you are obviously going to have an extremely large fleet, so all of these things play into how many ships you have.
I would use or even encourage something to this effect. The age of your nation, its population, how many worlds it inhabites with substantial populations - tens of millions and up. This is what I would call, the base for determining, number of ships, max size range of ships and "overall tech level". However, I would also leave room for Rp's and race history, creative and/or exotic tecnologies and similar 'wild cards'. That's my opinion on the issue.