TBD.
When it became very clear that the Commodore-class as initially designed was largely a gigantic flop, and a deeply inefficient flop at that, Republic High Command suddenly found themselves with two dozen functionally useless battleship hulls.
Never willing to let a "good" hull go to waste, High Command handed the lead ship of the class, the TRS Commodore, to the design team that handled the Valorous refit. Their instructions were simple: squeeze a useful ship out of this hull and don't spend too much.
At the same time, a large number of smaller ships were coming due for either refit or decommissioning. With the overall fleet shifting towards larger vessels, High Command was perfectly happy to let the Commodore redesign team have access to over a dozen Ramparts, twice as many Merits, and four times as many Triumphs (a ship they had so many of that they were literally throwing them at R&D projects).
After a year of planning, designing, and tinkering, they unveiled their finished product: the Commodore-class refit. Now a Super Carrier as opposed to a battleship, the Commodore was an entire fleet in a box. Each Commodore refit carried with it a Rampart, two Merits, four Triumphs, and four squadrons of fighters. While not quite a force that could engage a League fleet on its own, a Commodore could secure an entire system on her own, or take a lightly defended system.
The Commodore-class Refit operates best when it is tasked with securing or taking a lightly defended system. It carries with it enough fire power and hulls to clear out any but the most stubborn or well equipped pirate gang.
Most of the time, the Refit has become a fast response ship for situations within Terran space. Eight capital ships can pretty nicely change the shape of a confrontation almost anywhere.
In full fleet maneuvers, the Commodore Refit works best by deploying its docked ships at the edge of an engagement zone and providing the equivalent of artillery support from that position.
From Matt:
So, I built the Commodore-class (classic) and immediately realized that it was not a great design. The primary weapon is far too finicky and too difficult to use efficiently in the heat of battle. It could work as a siege weapon, but there aren't many situations where having a deeply specialized weapon is better than having just a solid, all around quality hull.
I took that model and gave it a solid look from the perspective of an in-universe designer. How can we make use of the existing hull? What sort of ship can come out of this hull with the least amount of work? At the end of that design time, I had the Refit completed, along with the Merit corvette.
Now, instead of a deeply specialized boulder thrower, we have a Super Carrier that is fully capable of acting as a rapid response force nearly anywhere within Terran space.