... The launch is the only one I have recreated this time around with the tons matching. My cost with a bit of rounding matches the MCr described on Book 2 pages 18 and 23.
My cost for just the hull, maneuver drive, power plant, fuel tankage, and two small craft couches is MCr14.05. ...
So you're not charging for streamlining or hardpoint.
... Apparently, the small craft designs do not require the inclusion of the architect's fee (Book 2 page 12), the 10% reduction in cost for being a standard design (Book 2 page 12), or the Cr100 (Book 2 page 17) cost for purchasing the standard design plans. ...
CT Book 2, page 17: "Vessels under 100 tons are considered to be small craft. There are eight standard designs available;
each design plan is available for Cr100. All take approximately twelve months to build. All are streamlined, and can enter atmospheres."
As with the architect fee, the Cr100 design plan fee is not included in the cost of the ship, or in this case small craft. You're dealing with two separate companies. You buy the plans from the "small design corporation" (CT Book 2, page 12, "Naval Architecture"), you take them over to the shipyard, you say, "I want [state number here] of this design." The shipyard will then demand payment: "A shipyard will insist upon a 20% down payment with the order for the vessel, as well as requiring a demonstration that proper financing is available to cover the balance when due," (CT Book 2, page 12, "Costs and Payments") but at that point you've already bought and paid for your design plans. Ergo, at the point where you're paying the "small design corporation" for your Cr100 standard design plan (or for your 1%-of-cost nonstandard design plans, for ships), you're paying out of pocket, before the mortgage (and therefore the per-unit cost of the ship/craft) is established.
Since the only folk who are requesting original designs are likely to be governments or corporations who can easily afford the up-front price, that's not a problem.
Whether or not they benefit from the 10% standard design discount has not been established. We know how much the small craft cost; the book states it. We know how much the standard design ships cost; the book states it. We know the standard design ship costs include the discount, because when we put together a standard design ship using the ship design rules, we can see there's a 10% difference between the cost we get for the components and what the book cost is. However, we do not have CT Book-2 small craft design rules; we can only speculate that IF we apply the
ship design rules to the design of
small craft, and our assumptions for that process are correct, then
this specific small craft does not appear to benefit from a discount.
... One of the comments is that none of the small craft have a bridge which is not required since in the Small craft section on Book 2 page 17 uses one or two small craft couches to control craft. ...
Unwarranted assumption. There is no Book-2 design sequence for small craft. Ergo, there is no rule specifying whether you do or don't need a bridge. What we know is:
1. The launch
appears to have no room for a bridge
if we assume that it is indeed using Maneuver A and Power Plant A, but it seems to function despite the apparent lack.
2. Everything larger than the launch has a large quantity of unidentified space.
We are left with two possible options: either the launch is NOT using Maneuver A / Power Plant A but is using something much smaller and is using the remaining tonnage for a bridge, or the launch IS using Maneuver A / Power Plant A but is limited in performance to 1G because it lacks a bridge, while the larger craft are using that mystery space for a bridge and therefore are able to use their drives' full capabilities.
A further point is that both slow boat and slow pinnace appear to be using drives smaller than the A/A to allow them to carry more cargo with lower performance. The slow boat cuts performance in half and gets 6.2 dTons in the deal: 0.8 out of the reduced size fuel tank and 5.4 out of the reduced drive (which is very odd since the A/A is only 5 dTons). The slow pinnace cuts performance from 5G to 2G and gets 9.2 dTons in the deal: 1 out of the reduced size fuel tank and 8.2 out of the reduced drive (which is very, very odd). Ergo it appears to be possible to have something smaller than an A/A - and something in that process is also drawing space out of our mysterious unclaimed volume. (In other words, the bridge size here does seem to depend on the size of the drives.)
An interesting side point is that
the small craft are limited in the weapons they mount: a launch (with an added computer) may not use lasers, a ship's boat may use one, a pinnace or cutter may mount up to 2. Neither the scout/courier nor the free trader are limited in what they mount, creating the possibility of a 6-laser free trader, despite the fact that we've agreed the cutter and pinnace plant/drive looks very much like the scout and trader's A's. One would expect, at the very least, that if they were all using the same drives then the launch and ship's boat would be able to use as many lasers as a pinnace or cutter.
... For anyone wanting to include a bridge I recommended changing the 20 ton minimum to 2 tons leaving the formula at 2% x hull size. the Cost formula I'm leaning towards keeping as MCr0.5 per 100 tons of hull. As an alternative I might change the formula to MCr0.5 per 10 tons of hull since small craft are about one-tenth the size of starship/non-starship hulls. ...
The ship's boat, pinnace and cutter have, respectively, 28.3%, 24%, and 19% of their volume mysteriously unaccounted for. 2% or 2 tons does not adequately identify the missing volume. My best guess is a bridge whose volume depends on the craft's performance, since that seems to be then only way to explain the slow boat and slow pinnace.
