okay, for everyone who thinks bigger is always better, here's some food for thought:
i'm currently playing in a game where the starship maxes at 255 holds/4 tpw and the flagship maxes at 200 holds/2 tpw. after some trials i found that the starship used 10 turns per round trip to terra and back to my base and the flagship used only 6. do the simple math and you'll find that after spending 60 turns with each ship, the flagship moved 1490 colos where the almighty starship moved only 1224 (51 holds being reserved for ore on each trip home).
pretty basic stuff i know, but other newbies like myself may need help with this number crunching crap.

Here I come to save the day!