I honestly don't see how this looks like the Gaian ship at all. Your persistence in the fact that it does baffles me.
What elements are you looking at here to make that accusation? What parts are you comparing, and design ideals are you using?
The design principles of gaian design are very organic shapes, and flowing design.
This transport has a very mechanical design style.
They are very different, I couldn't see this as a gaian ship at all.
I would go with some sort of survey vessel.
This looks like, if you keep it modestly sized, a ship made for observing deep space and tight areas like, say, a system with a very large/heavily clotted asteroid field/nebula.
Put on a few radar dishes and you suddenly have a sonar platform..
That's just tossing a random suggestion out there, though
i think you should keep both models, one looks like a gunboat(the first with fins) the second looks more crusier/destroyer like, both are great and should be used in the mod.