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How would I work out or find out how much a new Component costs to maintain? (And purchase...)

I was adding Armour "Just because there was room" and then found that it costs, relatively, a lot per unit.

I assumed there would be some consistent pattern for maintenance costs; a factor of the size, and/or tech level, etc. Now I find that some items cost more than others for their size, and that higher tech warp engines are cheaper than lower tech ones.

Is there a quick and simple reference anywhere? And/Or a way to add it to the tech tree?

(As it probable matters, I've installed the latest version of Icemania's AI Mod.)


Cheers.

In fact, different warp drives of the same tech level have different costs. Which is relevant when choosing which to research first/next..

Not what I intuitively expected :-/

Maintenance costs are proportional to the cost of the resources required for the component. Components which require more resources cost more to build and maintain. Kaldos Hyperdrives require 21 resources total (9 argon, 4 carbon fibre, 8 steel), Equinox Jumpdrives require 23 resources total (4 carbon fibre, 5 chromium, 10 krypton, 4 steel), and Calista-Dal Warp Drives require 23 resources total (5 carbon fibre, 5 chromium, 6 steel, 7 chromium), and the exact maintenance cost of the component will depend on the current costs of the resources required for the component, which you can check in the expansion planner.

According to this old thread, the purchase and maintenance cost formulas for a ship are:

I would also suggest that the difference in production and maintenance costs between the Equinox Jump Drive, Calista-Dal Warp Drive, and Kaldos Hyperdrive is normally marginal enough that the difference in production and maintenance costs between them is going to be irrelevant to an empire with a reasonably healthy economy; if your resources all cost 0.8 credits/unit, then you're looking at ~43 credits/year per Kaldos Hyperdrive versus ~46 credits/year per Equinox Jumpdrive or Calista-Dal Warp Drive.

There's a spreadsheet linked in the Guide to Guides II which has resource "densities" of various components ([total resources required]/[component size]), which can give you an idea of the relative costs of the various components, and it and another spreadsheet also linked in the Guide to Guides II list the resources required for the components.