Right, this idea gained some traction in the Discord so I'm posting it here:
Breezerider Gunboat
The Windrider has proven itself to be an effective vessel, if a very expensive one. As a result, the Design Team will be set to work on a new boat with some of the same concepts applied which will be named the 'Breezerider'.
The Breezerider will be roughly in the same size catagory as the Skyskiff, but it shall be longer than its more primative counterpart. Notably, its narrow deck will be fairly flat, with only short observation tower at rear to disrupt its flatness, and attachment points for 3 LACs will be placed in front of it in a straight line, with space to allow them to rotate in roughly a 270 degree arc (they can't point backwards, as that would cause the barrel to collide with the gun behind them unless they rotated their gun barrel away, and the rear gun would collide with the tower if it attempted to do so), enabling them to execute a full broadside blast to either side, although only a single cannon would be able to fire ahead, as a result.
As far as crystals are concerned, the Breezerider will feature 6 Trim Crystals in three pairs: One pair near the bow and stern each for excellent yaw and pitch control, and the last pair in the center. Taking lessons learned from the Windrider, the Breezerider will also feature a dual core setup, with one powering its single Lift Crystal and powering its primary shroud, and the other powering the trim crystals and weapons. The Primary Core Crystal and the Lift Crystal will be Small in Size, while the secondary core will be only Very Small, to save on costs.
Defensively, like the Windrider, the Breezerider also has a thin copper skin, except that it only covers the rooms where the primary core and lift crystal reside. Other than that and the backup shroud from its secondary core crystal, it will have no atypical defenses.
For webbing, it shall take the shape of a C (assuming the ship is facing ->), with heavy emphasis towards application on the bottom of the ship, below the gun's broadside firing arc. But at the same time, care will be taken to not overload the core crystals, although additional spars will be ran out in order to fully satisfy an Itshana Select Core, if we choose to outfit it so, but remain empty if we don't. In addition, any wiring will be carefully designed to ensure that no wires from the different cores remain firmly separate, to avoid the suspected cause of the power surges on the Windrider.
So, here it is, a cheap little gunboat that still has 75% of the Windrider's alpha strike capacity in exchange for losing its durability.
Notably, unless things go wrong and we're forced to use Itshana cores again, the ore cost of its equipment would only cost 8 ore (3 SUCKERPUNCHs, 1 Lift Crystal), rendering it a perfect fit for our current resource deficit. Shouldn't take too long for the project either, considering that it's not that much larger than a skiff and the main oddity, the dual core setup, we already have experience with.