It served well as the flasgship of a small task force, but for proper fleet command you'd need something rather bigger - i.e. Executor scale.
What reason is there to replace a working ship with something so much larger and more costly? Is it just because you want something bigger? The Home One is a solid Heavy Cruiser/Carrier/Command ship design. Proven in battle, being the most important thing.
I'm suggesting using them as the backbone of the fleet, but as commanding ships for large formations.
This didn't make sense so I think you're saying "I'm suggesting using them as the backbone of the fleet, but NOT as commanding ships for large formations."
In which case if you're going to be building ships of this class then why couldn't one of them be in charge of the others?
True, but they still relied very heavilly on the Mon Cal designs
That's right, designs proven to be superior in almost every way. So why shouldn't they? It wasn't until the Nebula Class SD that Imp designs caught up to MonCal.
The Liberties seemed to hold up pretty well at Endor, and the EU states that their reinforced shields make them effectively the equal of an ISD, despite being quite a bit smaller. However, I wouldn't have a problem with supplimenting them with other designs.
Equal in shields with less armor and less over all fire power and carrying fewer fighters. If we count the ISD as the standard cruiser design. Then the Liberty would be closer to a light cruiser and the Home One design would fair as a good heavy cruiser. Though I would agree that per the cost of a MonCal design the Liberty is not cost effective. Seeing how the MonCal's will be out numbered, they have to have ships that can atleast be a promised win vs a ISD. The Liberty was not that ship.
She's only 4km long, tops. A heavy cruiser would be something like the Mediator, or the WEG SSD - 8-8.5 km long.
Then she's twice the size and power of the standard cruiser OF THE TIME. The Mediator was a single ship, not a class run that I've ever heard of. Also, it was called a battle cruiser, not a heavy cruiser. the SSD was 18Km long and classed as a Battleship. That leaves the Home One in perfect size as a heavy cruiser.
A bit small to be considered a light cruiser, given that they were barely bigger than VenStars, but Mon Cals may be much smaller than their Imperial equivalents.
I wouldn't doubt that MonCal designs are smaller then their Imp equals. The later MC90 designs easily out classed ISDs and ISD-2s barely 6 years after Battle of Endor. Add that the MC90s were only 1.2km long.
Fighters aren't that useful in fleet actions - they can certainly kill capships if the shields are knocked out, but to do that you need other capships. You'd be best off using battle-carrier concepts (like pretty much every design except the Tector and Allegiance type), or dedicated battleships at the core with carriers in support
Again, not too sure of your point here. Seems to be missing. Are you saying that the Home One design isn't able to hold out against an ISD? Battle of Endor showed that this isn't the case. The Home One held out very well and brought in a large payload of fighters. This is the perfect Battle-Carrier that you speak of.
At the cost of firepower. The best use of Home One types would be to keep the original design and put them as the heart of small task forces, as at Endor.
Why, why and why? Cost of firepower... these ships weren't built to be warships but faired well anyways. Why couldn't you upgrade them further? The original design was a floating hotel, not a good idea for the New Republic Defense Fleet. Heart of small task forces? Yet again, why? Why should they be limited to small groups? The Rebel fleet seemed to work together very well even when packed badly against the odds. Home One was that sense of together for them.
