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How does the game calculate the cost of a ship? I can't see any thing except the materials needed to build each component.

Am I correct in assuming that the game works out the total amount of materials needed to build all the components in the ship, then multiplies them by the cost of the materials?

If so, increasing the quantity of materials used for each component should increase the cost of the ship corespondingly. Will it also increase the maintenance cost?

ORIGINAL: CariadocThorne

How does the game calculate the cost of a ship? I can't see any thing except the materials needed to build each component.

Am I correct in assuming that the game works out the total amount of materials needed to build all the components in the ship, then multiplies them by the cost of the materials?

If so, increasing the quantity of materials used for each component should increase the cost of the ship corespondingly. Will it also increase the maintenance cost?

Correct on all accounts.

Thanks!

It's not that simple tho.

I mean... this is, at large, how i understand the system as well, but there must be additional factors involved.

Just for example, i just went into one of may saves and checked the cost and resources of a random ship. Here's what it comes out to:
Build cost of: 4173
Maintenance: 1268
(Maintenance at least seems to always come out as 30-ish % of the build cost. There is fluctuation, but it's probably just rounding)

Sum of resource costs at current market: 414.6
(assuming maximum(?) 3.3 per resource, comes out with 1389, close but still not a hit)

PS: My empire has 3% maintenance savings, not sure at which point these are applied (preview in construction ship? List of Existing Ships? Final Budget?), but 3% isn't that big of a difference.

Ok, you've inspired me to do some experimentation.

I started a new game, and immediately added a new design with 100 basic reactors and nothing else. Projected ship cost was 12,503, maintenance cost 5,161.

Next, I multiplied the number of each material in a reactor by 10, started another new game with the same settings, and added a new design with 100 reactors and nothing else. Projected ship cost was 125,025, so increased in proportion, but the maintenance cost was 29,271, so increased less than 6 times, rather than the 10x increase I expected.

I'm not sure why the maintenance cost didn't increase as much as expected, but this hopefully bodes well for my plans, as I intend to increase ship construction costs around 4-5x, but maintenance costs by somewhat less (hopefully around 3x), to create a lower ship-count game where each ship really matters and battles are more likely to be between a handful of ships, rather than dozens, and saving ships from a losing battle, or killing most of the attacking fleet, is at least a minor victory.

Interesting. Have you checked what the current prices of the resources were in both games?

Start of a new game, all 3 resources involved were at 0.8

Something is not adding up here ... I have calculated all materials needed to manufacture components for a medium freighter and rated the units at market price all at .8 which was simple.

This yielded 233.6 total cost.

The design screen however shows a purchase cost of 1217.

So 983.4 credits extra to purchase; could this be Manufacturing costs, or maybe hull costs? The actual purchase cost in this case is 421% higher than the cost of the materials.

Furthermore, each component has a a cost described beside the size in the component guide. These are apparently in K units. but are far greater than the affected cost differential when adding or subtracting the component amount.