Rodger and I are interested in peoples ideas on ship cost formulae. At the moment Shipwrite actually uses a random cost generator, but we'd likek to put in a more functional estimator. Apart from the cost of outfs/weaps which we can just add in, we need to give value to things like turn and speed, armour and tech levels etc. Actually, generating sensible costs for the weapons and outfits is itself an interesting problem.

Perhaps we need to develop a customisable formula mechanism so different developers can applie their own formulae to suit the economy of their plugins.

So, does anyone have any ideas to start of with?

Ralph and Rodger

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R & R Software

Well, I suppose since you would have to base it on every aspect of the ship (besides a few things, such as the length, which doesn't mean anything anyway) you would have to say like:

For every 50 units of mass, 500 credits

or

For every 50 crew members, 200 credits

To get accurate measurements you'd probably have to look at the specs on the original EVO ships and see how crew (or mass) relates to cost. Divide the cost by the number of crew, or whatever. But than again, it has been argued that EVO's pricing isn't very accurate anyway, so you might have to make up your own system...and of course, you'd also have to deal with the weapons on the ship (among other things) but that would be easier...just charge whatever the weapons cost.

If I weren't so lazy I'd take an hour and put something together. Too bad...

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-Lobster
LobLobster@aol.com

if you're going for realism, the most expensive part of a ship would be the engine. this implies that the largest chunk of the price should be some constant multiple of (accel + speed) * mass. the next largest part of the price would be the shielding, costing probably half of what the engine does or more (on average); it should be a function of shield and shield regen. next up would be turn rate, though it could be included in the engine function to make it (accel + speed) * turn * mass or some such formula. descending order after that would be armor, turret spaces, gun spaces, free mass, fuel, cargo. unfortunately, the shuttle is greatly underpriced with respect to the other ships, so it's quite difficult to gain a blanket formula. my suggestion so far is ((accel + speed) * mass / 2) + (shields * mass * 120/ shield regen) + proper multipliers applied to armor, turret spaces, gun spaces, free mass, fuel, and cargo. sorry, i'm not in the mood to try to keep my connection alive while i figure it out and this thing always barfs at me when i try to reconnect. but that's my input for now, hope it's at least somewhat helpful

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if tin whistles are made of tin, what's a fog horn made of?

If you are trying to figure out costs for ships and such in a plug in there is no way to get a formula for it, and if you did it would suck. It is better to figure out by yourself using some guidelines. Like when you expect the player to buy the ship, as in the scoutship is fairly nice for it's price because it's made to be an easy upgrade when they aren't making much. You also have to base it on comparisions between other ships is equal or different value. Then you also have to figure what kind of ship etc etc. Don't do a cost per mass thing or something.

Dragon

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Quote

Originally posted by Dragon:
**If you are trying to figure out costs for ships and such in a plug in there is no way to get a formula for it, and if you did it would suck. It is better to figure out by yourself using some guidelines. Like when you expect the player to buy the ship, as in the scoutship is fairly nice for it's price because it's made to be an easy upgrade when they aren't making much. You also have to base it on comparisions between other ships is equal or different value. Then you also have to figure what kind of ship etc etc. Don't do a cost per mass thing or something.

Dragon

**

He wants a sort of formula for his ShipWrite program so it can estimate the cost that the ship should be after all the data for the resource is inputted. That is why he needs a formula, not just for the fun of it. Unless he writes some sort of advanced artifical intelligence into his program, I don't see how it would be able to "figure out" the cost without some sort of formula to rely on.

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-Lobster
LobLobster@aol.com

In answer to the "shuttlecraft is underpriced" point, I'm just gonna take a few seconds out of whatever it is I'm supposed to be doing (haven't worked that out yet) and mention a couple of things.

1. The materials used in the ship's construction would play a huge part in its cost. While not really affecting anything except the ship's lifetime, which is a function that the game doesn't yet support (which might be an interesting idea for EVN). So this pretty much blows the entire debate out of the water. Better to just make up a price...

2. Was it mass-produced or put together as a "one-off" style ship? It's like this with guitars. Fylde guitars are hand-made for each order, but Yammaha do them on conveyor belts. This too would affect the price of the ship, but not the ship itself.

3. The price would depend greatly upon the ship's usefullness to the guy owning it. In the central Miranu systems, having great Armour isn't neccessary. And if a ship was vital to a gövt, it'd be worth more. Right?

There are loads of similar arguments. It all boils down to this:

I suggest you work out some kind of -very-simple- thing, for example, adding everything up and dividing by whatever it takes to get a realistic number. Probably around 4 or 5. Because realistically, people wouldn't stick with the "given" price anyway... so it'd be OK to just give them a rough (very rough) idea.

But please guys, keep up the good work. We need more like you...

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Grybs.
(url="http://"http://www.grybs.com/harzius/")Harzius Productions(/url)

How about something on the lines of

((Upgradeability x Engineering) + cost of built in equipment + (F x Cargo)) / Constant

Where:
Upgradeability is a function of free mass when all equipment removed modified by limiters to do with max weapons

Engineering is a function of speed and acceleration and turning (maybe just multiply them)

F is a constant defined by the player based on the typical profitability of hauling cargo in that scenario

Constant = (Cost of shuttle using this formula where constant =1) / Cost of shuttle in EVO.
This constant would turn whatever bizarre numbers come out of this formula into something workable for the game in credits.

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M A R T I N • T U R N E R

Quote

Originally posted by Martin Turner:
**How about something on the lines of

((Upgradeability x Engineering) + cost of built in equipment + (F x Cargo)) / Constant

Where:
Upgradeability is a function of free mass when all equipment removed modified by limiters to do with max weapons

Engineering is a function of speed and acceleration and turning (maybe just multiply them)

F is a constant defined by the player based on the typical profitability of hauling cargo in that scenario

Constant = (Cost of shuttle using this formula where constant =1) / Cost of shuttle in EVO.
This constant would turn whatever bizarre numbers come out of this formula into something workable for the game in credits.

**

I have to say that this makes the most sense so far. But I would like to add the suggestion of allowing the user to use the default formula or do either/or...

(A) Write his/her own formula

(B) Modify the constants

...I would also like to add that everything to do with the formula should be altered in preferences, it would just take up too much space (and be confusing) on the edit ship screen.

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"Holy F***! He’s got my ass!!” - A friend of mine right after the roller coaster we were on started to work again.

(url="http://"http://www.joljvik.com")The New Website!(/url)

Round up to the nearest thousand credits, Sales-people like pretty numbers.

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From an instructors comments on a paper written by a student who had repeatedly used the word burro instead of burrow.
"Dear sir, it appears you do not know the difference between your ass and a hole in the ground."

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But of course you'll want to let the plugwright (I just coined a new word, do you like it?) adjust the price themselves when they want to. The formula can't take game-play into account. A plug designer might just want the ship to cost more to adjust the amount of money that a player gets from boarding it. Or a ship might cost more because it's rare, in the game, or because it's plated with gold. Sounds like you guys are making a great program, though, can't wait to try the finished version.

Bubbles

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Thanks for the ideas. Any cost fomulae will of course be optional.

I am now going to try out a few of the ideas from here. I want to make it customisable of course, but when you have dozens of ships to set up 'fairly' then any rough guide will help. I lean towards giving accelleration, speed and shields/recharge the greatest weighting. I woudl put a muliplier in for military craft although a tech level muliplier of some kind coudl be used too. We'll put in a preferences dialog to set this up, and those who don't want to use the 'calculate a price' option can simply ignore it.

Cheers
Ralph

PS Mission control as just gone beta, with the fixing of many menu bugs and the final addition of the adaptive lists. Shipwrite has had some bug fixes too. I'm just about to post a notice.

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R & R Software