Caerus Class Free Trader: For Less Than 14 MCr You Can Have a Jump 2 Ship Capable of Hauling 50 tons of Cargo in (no) Luxury!
A ship design and art I've been working on for a few weeks.
The Caerus class (Greek god of opportunity and luck) is an exercise in minimalism and cost cutting, aiming to be the smallest and cheapest jump capable ship money can buy, that is still able to serve a practical purpose. She is built using a light 100 dton close structure hull that can enter planetary atmospheres but still carry external cargo between high ports. She is a tail sitting design, to allow the cargo decks to not have grav plating without worrying about thrust sending cargo flying into the walls. The sloped fuel tanks running down her side are unable to disguise the fact that the ship is a utilitarian box, as her shape is dominated by her comparatively enormous 50 dton 2 double high cargo bay, with bow and aft cargo loading ramps to allow for easy roll on roll off cargo.
Her third deck is a cramped affair, with her 4 person crew crammed into two tiny double occupancy state rooms and an undersized bridge, the only token gesture of luxury being a 10,000 credit entertainment system in the small lounge.
The third deck also houses the ships drive systems, stuffed wherever they would fit along the hull of the craft and inside 4 nacelles. Its complete focus on form following function and inattention to things such as ease of maintenance allowed for the drives to be substantially cheaper, but are quite a bit more difficult to maintain, often exhausting the crew after just a week or so space side.
This is not helped by the fact that the drives themselves were built on a budget, the maneuver drive and power plant are both oversized and the Jump Drive is robust but poorly calibrated, requiring venturing out past 150 diameters in order to safely jump.
Her killer feature is her large flexible cargo capacity, able to haul 50 tons of cargo on J2 routes, and a staggering 150 tons (50 tons internally, 100 tons externally) on jump 1 mains between high ports. Between her low purchase and maintenance costs (a mere 1,155 credits a month!) and her enormous utility, those crews who have the grit to tolerate her no frills accommodations will find themselves with an enormously profitable little traders on their hands.