As we all know, setting ship prices for an RPG can be a bit tough (issues of fairness and such). However, I've developed a formula which appears to be quite fair:
2((.05v)*d^(logx)+0.1(c+m)^2 + (a^4)/75 + (s^3)/10 + w + f)
Looks a bit complicated, but here's what the variables stand for:
v=manueverability (as expressed in Resedit, 1-5).
d=speed
x=acceleration
c=cargo space
m=free mass
a=armor
s=shields
w=weapons
f=outfits

Using this formula, the price of a Confed frigate is $3,713,656.38 or 3.7 million rounded, which is a rather fairer price than the five million that it currently costs.

The formula is free to use but I do claim a copyright on it, so you can't go around claiming it's your own.

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spl_cadet: Defender of the Church, defeater of Protestantism, dread of the atheists, rebutter of arguments, and slayer of the occasional dragon or two.
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sounds good. Looks like an easier to ballance the prices.

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Looks like Mazca was thinking a bit too hard about the Igazra while playing... Forge
I need to pay more attention.

It does look good but personally I would go for a formula Which actually works out so that a confed frigate is worth 5M and a rebel cruiser 14M etc. Because then all you new ship's prices are going to be relative to the old ones. Unless of course your making a plug-in that changes all the old ship's prices then obviously you would want a new formula. You've also got to be careful not to make ships to cheap cos while it may look good on the expensive ships the little ones could cause serious problems- I mean think of the economical disaster if the shuttlecraft went down t half price!

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Quote

Originally posted by spl_cadet:
v=manueverability (as expressed in Resedit, 1-5).
d=speed
x=acceleration
c=cargo space
m=free mass
a=armor
s=shields
w=weapons
f=outfits

May I suggest adding in l (labor costs)? Think about it: Just because you have all the bits and pieces, somebody still has to put Flap A into Slot B, etc..

Labor costs could be based on some decimal times the overall mass of the ship, as a bigger ship --> more parts, and more parts --> takes longer to put together, and takes longer to put together --> higher labor costs. A value such as 0.15 seems about right, but I just made that figure up.

To my mind, labor costs would be rather high because it is demanding, precise, exacting work requiring high skilled labor--you don't want your ship blowing up in space because some yahoo screwed up some part of the build.

Lit Nerd

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God Bless America and all who defend her!

(This message has been edited by Lit Nerd (edited 06-05-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Lit Nerd:
**May I suggest adding in l (labor costs)?

**

Probably a constant x either mass or length.

There should also be a prestige (fudge) factor (new ship design, government only, tech level, biggest, fastest, etc.).

The most useful thing to do with this is to assume Matt Burch's values as cannon. Then tweak the formula to fit his ships (with the exception of the Confed Gunboat which is underpriced--you can make a profit by buying and selling it). Then use this to assign prices to plug-in ships.

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For the labor costs heres my figures:
New ship design: .5 (Etc: Kestrel)
Upgraded Ship Design: .25 (Etc: Rebel Distroyer)

The new ship design is so high because its new. You have to put on all the weapons, hull and drives just to make it run, not to mention sheild generators.
Where as an upgraded ship, all you have to do is tweek the shelids and strap on a few weapons, so labor costs are low.

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-Unreal Centipede
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Nice formula! How long did it take you?

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Destroyer E is the name of my ship and the name has a good meaning.

Quote

Originally posted by Destroyer E:
Nice formula! How long did it take you?

About a half hour to make and tweak.

As for the labor costs, that's the coefficient of 2

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spl_cadet: Defender of the Church, defeater of Protestantism, dread of the atheists, rebutter of arguments, and slayer of the occasional dragon or two.
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Quote

Originally posted by Lit Nerd:
**May I suggest adding in l (labor costs)? Think about it: Just because you have all the bits and pieces, somebody still has to put Flap A into Slot B, etc..

Labor costs could be based on some decimal times the overall mass of the ship, as a bigger ship --> more parts, and more parts --> takes longer to put together, and takes longer to put together --> higher labor costs. A value such as 0.15 seems about right, but I just made that figure up.

To my mind, labor costs would be rather high because it is demanding, precise, exacting work requiring high skilled labor--you don't want your ship blowing up in space because some yahoo screwed up some part of the build.

Lit Nerd

**

Discounted Confed Cruiser only 2 million

some assembly required.

seems like a bad idea to me. I dont think that could ever turn out right.

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Cheat any way you want in almost any mac game. Even Nova.

Quote

Originally posted by spl_cadet:
**About a half hour to make and tweak.

As for the labor costs, that's the coefficient of 2

**

Nice! You've got everything covered.

Good job.

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Looks at formula

Why do all you people have to do everything with PURE MATHMATICS?!?!

screams and runs away

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Insanity has its advantages

Hmm. Not bad. Could be useful for settling those endless arguments about webstory ship pricing. In fact, I think I'll write it down and try it in my own plug...

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"Time is an illusion. Lunchtime doubly so." -- Douglas Adams

Quote

Originally posted by U.E. Admiral:
**Looks at formula

Why do all you people have to do everything with PURE MATHMATICS?!?!

screams and runs away

**

What other way is there?

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To err is human.
To err and blame it on someone else, is even more human.

Quote

Originally posted by Cresent:
**What other way is there?

**

That depends on who you are. If you are, like me, a physics major/physicist, you are entitled to round everthing to the closest order of magnitude. Okay, so when you round everything under 5 billion to 1 billion it gets a little messy, but those are really just details anyway, right?

Other than physicist math, you also have "stupid people math" where you add it all together, divide by two, square it, and then throw your hands up in dispair and set it all equal to 7.

And then there is "Douglas Adam's fan math" wherein you skip all the messy parts and set the answer to 42.

(edit)Perhaps I should add something on topic, namely that I may well use that to calculate fair prices in a plug I am working on. If I do, you will be properly credited.(/edit)
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"Damn, everybody wants something up their ass today! Yeah, I'm cool like that." - forge

(This message has been edited by Russell Quintero (edited 06-18-2003).)

Quote

Originally posted by Russell Quintero:
That depends on who you are. If you are, like me, a physics major/physicist, you are entitled to round everthing to the closest order of magnitude. Okay, so when you round everything under 5 billion to 1 billion it gets a little messy, but those are really just details anyway, right?

"CORRECT WITHIN AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE"... Wrong.

In case you have never seen these before, here is the full list.
Off the topic, but fun.

Attributed to Dyrk Schingman, Oregon State University:

After several years of studying and hard work, I have finally learned scientific jargon. The following list of phrases and their definitions will help you to understand that mysterious language of science and medicine.

"IT HAS LONG BEEN KNOWN"...
I didn't look up the original reference.

"A DEFINITE TREND IS EVIDENT"...
These data are practically meaningless.

"WHILE IT HAS NOT BEEN POSSIBLE TO PROVIDE DEFINITE ANSWERS TO THESE QUESTIONS"...
An unsuccessful experiment, but I still hope to get it published.

"THREE OF THE SAMPLES WERE CHOSEN FOR DETAILED STUDY"...
The results of the others did not make any sense.

"TYPICAL RESULTS ARE SHOWN"...
This is the prettiest graph.

"THESE RESULTS WILL BE IN A SUBSEQUENT REPORT"...
I might get around to this sometime, if pushed/funded.

"THE MOST RELIABLE RESULTS ARE OBTAINED BY JONES"...
He was my graduate student; his grade depended on this.

"IN MY EXPERIENCE"...
Once.

"IN CASE AFTER CASE"...
Twice.

"IN A SERIES OF CASES"...
Thrice.

"IT IS BELIEVED THAT"...
I think.

"IT IS GENERALLY BELIEVED THAT"...
A couple of other guys think so too.

"CORRECT WITHIN AN ORDER OF MAGNITUDE"...
Wrong.

"ACCORDING TO STATISTICAL ANALYSIS"...
Rumor has it.

"A STATISTICALLY ORIENTED PROJECTION OF THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THESE FINDINGS"...
A wild guess.

"A CAREFUL ANALYSIS OF OBTAINABLE DATA"...
Three pages of notes were obliterated when I knocked over a glass of beer.

"IT IS CLEAR THAT MUCH ADDITIONAL WORK WILL BE REQUIRED BEFORE A COMPLETE UNDERSTANDING OF THIS PHENOMENA OCCURS"...
I don't understand it.

"AFTER ADDITIONAL STUDY BY MY COLLEAGUES"...
They don't understand it either.

"THANKS ARE DUE TO JOE BLOTZ FOR ASSISTANCE WITH THE EXPERIMENT AND TO ANDREA SCHAEFFER FOR VALUABLE DISCUSSIONS" ...
Mr. Blotz did the work and Ms. Schaeffer explained to me what it meant.

"A HIGHLY SIGNIFICANT AREA FOR EXPLORATORY STUDY"...
A totally useless topic selected by my committee.

"IT IS HOPED THAT THIS STUDY WILL STIMULATE FURTHER INVESTIGATION IN THIS FIELD"...
I quit.

Thanks to all the faculty and visiting professors that unknowingly contributed to this article.

Quote

Originally posted by Russell Quintero:
**That depends on who you are. If you are, like me, a physics major/physicist, you are entitled to round everthing to the closest order of magnitude. Okay, so when you round everything under 5 billion to 1 billion it gets a little messy, but those are really just details anyway, right?

Other than physicist math, you also have "stupid people math" where you add it all together, divide by two, square it, and then throw your hands up in dispair and set it all equal to 7.

And then there is "Douglas Adam's fan math" wherein you skip all the messy parts and set the answer to 42.

(edit)Perhaps I should add something on topic, namely that I may well use that to calculate fair prices in a plug I am working on. If I do, you will be properly credited.(/edit)**

But it's still math. Not that I'm against it, I use math for everything.

------------------
To err is human.
To err and blame it on someone else, is even more human.

Quote

Originally posted by spl_cadet:
**As we all know, setting ship prices for an RPG can be a bit tough (issues of fairness and such). However, I've developed a formula which appears to be quite fair:
2((.05v)*d^(logx)+0.1(c+m)^2 + (a^4)/75 + (s^3)/10 + w + f)
Looks a bit complicated, but here's what the variables stand for:
v=manueverability (as expressed in Resedit, 1-5).
d=speed
x=acceleration
c=cargo space
m=free mass
a=armor
s=shields
w=weapons
f=outfits

Using this formula, the price of a Confed frigate is $3,713,656.38 or 3.7 million rounded, which is a rather fairer price than the five million that it currently costs.

The formula is free to use but I do claim a copyright on it, so you can't go around claiming it's your own.

**

Nice formula, very practical, but in a game like EV shouldn't supply and demand be taken into consideration?
It would add to the 'living breathing" universe feel.

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Even the dying coal carries a flame.

I like the idea of fair ship pricing but there are some considerations to take into account. As MCM stated just above me, there are other factors to take into account.

Supply and Demand
Market Share
Corporate Greed (This alone kills the realism of fair ship prices)

Not to mention, you can't really come up with a fair ship formula using weapon values because those aren't fair to begin with either. You'll have to manualy analyze the description of each weapon, break it down into it's material components, and estimate (There goes accuracy) labor, R&D;, Materials, Marketing, Maintainence, and other costs just to formulate a semi-fair index of weapon prices.

I just think it makes for a much more realistic universe when you overprice everything and throw human randomness and greed into the mix. I'm sure that the car companies don't sit down, part out cars, and throw everything into a computer. They Look at the gross cost of each car, decide on a target net profit (This can be totally random), and sell each car to the Dealerships for that Gross + Net. The Dealers, in turn, add their own often-negotiable markup to the total and you've got car prices. This markup varies from dealer to dealer depending on demand. For instance, the MSRP on a new T-Bird varies from $37,420 - $43,995. I saw them advertised for $20,000 over that when they first hit the market. The point is, mathematical formulas have almost nothing to do with the market value of consumer products. As far as I can tell, companies can charge whatever they damn well please as long as they can sell their products. Hence, a complex, presurized, chemical-sealed electrolyte containment and transmission module (AA Battery) can run you 2.50 and the cheap, half-inch-long plastic clip that holds my Oxygen Sensor Cable in place in my car just cost me 15 bucks plus shipping and handling.

If there were formulas for the consumer price index, I'd be making a killing on Wall-Street.

-AJ

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0-60 3.0s...1320ft/9.2s...Head Gasket Bursts...

Would the critics please note that I designed it for RPG's?

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Spreading the Gospel, one board at a time.
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