depends on spöb vs. shďp TechLevel

In the default Nova scenario if you go to the shipyards on Dunroamin, Hearth, Kerensky, Misfire, New Ireland, or Ryll you'll notice that the price of an Asteroid Miner is 6% below what is specified in the shďp resource. At those same spöb's shipyards the price of a Viper is 3% below the shďp resource price value. I noticed this apparent anomaly quite awhile ago, but never really understood what was going on until recently. I've been using the EV-Classic TC for Nova as a testbed for some other problems I'm working on and noticed that shipyard prices were apparently varying all over the Classic universe. So I decided to end the old mystery and characterize the variances I was seeing. What I found can be summarized as follows:

If a spöb's base TechLevel is less than 6 and a shďp's TechLevel is less than that spöb's base TechLevel, then the shipyard price for that shďp is reduced by 3 percent for every unit of difference between shďp and spöb TechLevels. A more succinct formula for this is:

IF (spöb_bTL <= 5) AND (shďpTL < spöb_bTL) THEN ((spöb_bTL - shďpTL) * 3)% price reduction is applied

This price behavior is just barely noticeable in the default Nova scenario because a great majority of the shipyards depend on Special Tech Levels instead of the spöb's base Tech Level for determining what shďps are available. This price behavior doesn't occur at all in the Override TC for Nova because all ships in that scenario require Special Tech Levels for shipyard availability. The behavior is very apparent in the Classic scenario TC because virtually all purchaseable shďps make use of the spöb base Tech Level for their availability. Based on a quick perusal of shďp and spöb resources, this behavior should also be apparent in the Polycon TC-plug, but I haven't done any Polycon testing to verify it.

This behavior is totally undocumented in either the Nova Bible or the EV Classic/Override Bible. My guess is that Mr. Burch implemented it for Classic in order to provide pricing variety without resorting to a multitude of shďp variants. The behavior was then subsequently forgotten as time marched forward and other matters became more pressing.

So what good is this behavior? :huh: Got me, I dunno, but it can indeed be used to provide some variety of prices for whatever that's worth. And some mention of it should probably make its way into one or more of Zacha Pedro's template tomes.

Later ...

This post has been edited by Arturo : 09 October 2004 - 09:28 PM

If I remember right, this was something that goes all the way back to EV. And I think it's true for outfits as well.

I figured it was common knowledge back then. I guess not?

Ahh, I've always wondered what caused that. Seems strange that it should only be for TechLevels 5 and below.

I used to know that, but I'd forgotten.

With regards to it only being for 5 or below, anything above Tech 5 used to be special tech. Or, at least, that's what Matt envisaged when he coded it up for EV Classic.

A very early cheat I wrote (In the days of Classic) set a particular planet's tech level to 9999. Prices for everything were through the floor; shipyards and outfitters would give you money to take their stuff off of their hands.

The discount for lower tech levels makes some sense to me. On a planet whose GDP comes from growing bananas, a Valkyrie would be pretty hot-looking; but someone who hangs out around Stardock IV all the time will say "So what?" On a more advanced planet, no one's going to charge you top dollar for something they would consider obselete.

Now, in Nova's Federation nothing is obselete even if it's three centuries old; the march of technology took a sudden about face a long time ago, and I wouldn't say they've fully recovered yet.

This post has been edited by Eugene Chin : 10 October 2004 - 01:22 PM

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On a more advanced planet, no one's going to charge you top dollar for something they would consider obselete.

As I understand it, the valk is cheap at the banana planet, not at the advanced one.

bmac, on Oct 10 2004, 09:11 PM, said:

As I understand it, the valk is cheap at the banana planet, not at the advanced one.
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That'll be because of it being for only 5 and below as Pipeline explained.

Maybe this could be changed for 1.0.9? Make it for about 10 and below. Or I don't know, how high do the base Tech Levels go in Nova?

Tech levels do odd things in Nova. I have a suspicion that this is somewhat hacked together in Nova as stands (both engine and scenario).

Dave @ ATMOS

Thanks guys. That little abnormality was going to be one of the next things I looked into. (Y)

Arturo, on Oct 10 2004, 04:25 AM, said:

-snip-
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Most definitely interesting. I knew about something similar in EVC, but never investigated it. Most definitely worthy of a mention in a future shďp annotated template.