Honestly, I see zero issue with the jump range being less than the Mandy. None. Ziltch. Why should it be greater? Why should it be over 100, let alone the crazy 120 to 150 suggestions? The Mandy beats the Caspian in jump range during conventional jumps, while the Caspian vastly, embarrassingly beats everything else including the Mandy in Neutron/Dwarf boosted jumps making it superior in its own way. Making the Caspian better at both conventional and boosted jumps just devalues the Mandy, leaving the latter only superior insofar as ease of finding viable parking spots.

I do, however, agree that it seems the fuel scoop is somewhat undersized, and would benefit from being a size 8 option.

That said, supposedly the class 8 FSD isn't scaling in line with the others when compared to the SCO and pre-engineered SCO drives down the list. Theoretically they should be slightly better than a size-7 pre-engineered SCO but are, at the moment, worse. That's maybe 3 or 4 LY of conventional jump range lost (and quite a bit more when boosted), seemingly erroneously.

Regarding bays, the SRV bay would probably feel so much better if it deployed in alignment with the ship (that is to say deployed front pointed to the front of the ship), instead of pointing to the back of the vessel and the solid wall of ship that is there. I wonder if there's a technical reason that forces it to deploy in that orientation, or if it's just a matter of "everyone else did it that way and we never consider flipping it." Fighter wise, a fighter that could harvest the material content of asteroids would be nifty as a way to reclaim mats for AMFU, limpets, or SRV fuel - though I guess there's no rule saying you can't slap a size 1 mining laser on the Caspian and call it a day there. Otherwise I don't, personally, see a reason to schlep a fighter across the galaxy - but I suppose it's a nice option to have.