It may not be immediately apparent, but my little speech on psionics and their effect on the human body and mind tied directly into the way the hunt target died. I'll elaborate further on that later, but to continue the trend;
Exile Fleet was built with one thing in mind; efficiency. Efficiency of resources, efficiency of fuel management, efficiency of maintenance, all in all, the ships in the fleet were designed to be steady and long-lasting so long as they recieved a bare minimum of maintenance and care, and they were designed to be built with a scarcity of resources; despite theoretically having every bit of resource on the Old World at their disposal, much of the planet was regarded as "off-limits", occupied as it was by the Foe, and the actual moving of resources to the shipyard in orbit of the planet was costly and time consuming in and of itself.
Each ship is built as a hollow cylinder, around a cylindrical core which runs lengthways along the ship. The hollow portion of the ship rotates around the core at such speeds as to produce artificial gravity through centrifugal forces. The ship's population therefore lives on the inside of the hull, with the core behaving as the sky. The entire outside of the vessel is dotted with starlight recievers, which focus starlight through into the filter screens that coat the core, and so sunlight is provided for the people living on the ship's surface. The light is often dim and failing, and artificial lighting is preferred, but life cannot exist without sunlight, and the light provided by the starlight filters is used for the extensive farming operations that occur on the surface.
The Navigator's quarters, power generators and psionicist's quarters all reside inside the core itself. Here gravity is provided naturally, through a mass generator that creates enough artificial mass to produce a gravity field that takes in the living quarters inside the core. The ships engines are attached at fore and aft of the ship, with the most powerful thrust being provided by the aft engines. Directional thrust is provided by smaller engine modules attached to the eight flanks of the vessel in a cardinal positions formation. The ships maneuvre poorly, considering their incredible mass and poor quality thrust-generation, but serve adequately for the purposes of the fleet.
It has often been speculated that placing the power generators in the most important location of the ship, the core, was a significant mistake. A fusion meltdown at the wrong time could render the entire ship without a navigator or replacements for the navigational position, and destroy the ships gravitational integrity. However, the possibility of a meltdown is considered exceptionally low, and for the situation to get out of hand, all fusion generators would have to meltdown simultaneously, rendering it a theoretical impossibility. Therefore, renovations have never been undergone by any of the vessels.