Ship prices

General discussion about anything related to Transcendence.
Amilir
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The thing about education is that the price the market will bear is linked to the expected earnings of the educated. If increases in productivity increase lifetime earnings the price of education will expand to keep college administrators in the upper class.
That doesn't apply if everyone is educated.
Using the ISS as an example only helps if we're talking about stuff that looks like the ISS. The method of construction dictates the architecture. Show me a ship in Transcendence that looks like it's made from tinkertoys. Even a ship built in sections would have to be welded together in one place and then have the armor installed on the finished hull if it's going to have the smooth lines we see in the game. And only a few ships have potential repeating units and those units are themselves too large to build in a pressurized space, like cross sections of a Phobos. The only ship that can be build your way is the Ferian warrior.
Ah! Ferian warriors! Thank you!
You enter into a vast chamber, only partially pressurized. Large metal maws consume a small fortune in rocks and ores delivered by Ferian miners. Beneath them you see various vessels shrouded by the cranes and girders of a shipyard. Most of the vessels are new Ferian miners being created out of raw materials. A few are much larger and have a more sinister shape.
There. We have a description of a shipyard, and it's both in a building, and partially pressurized. Also, t55, drakes, aurochs, dwarg behemoth... LOTS of ships have what appear to be section lines.
What same stuff? You can point to the reactors and weapons. Hey, junction boxes and light switches are standardized too but it doesn't mean every house has the same wiring diagram. Very few ships have identical sections. Just the freighters, the ferian warrior, and maybe the Phobos, though the latter looks cigar shaped rather than cylindrical to my eye and I can't find where I put the converted meshes to check.
Why would all the sections have to be the same? When you're making fifty ships, you can still make one part fifty times even if it isn't used more than once per ship.
Besides, the ability of non-Luminous robots to operate autonomously is belied by the existence of human miners, human freighter pilots, and, to be blunt, humans doing anything but research and bureaucratic makework. Think about it. Even for the ringers it's more practical to provide technology to zooanthropes than to design robots for the job. Asteroid mining is a lot more forgiving than ship construction. The Commonwealth finds it worth employing actual human beings even in Eridani where they're mostly mining titanium and the Centauri Warlords are preying on them.
You might have a point here. On the other hand, you still haven't shown that workers earn a significant wage. Besides, even with a significant wage, how much work can a human do for that wage? I'd bet a lot.
Inertialess drive is not the same thing as reactionless drive. Try it some time. You still get drive plumes. That means you're still throwing reaction mass out the back of your ship to move, you just get wiggy inertia dumping in relation to the local reference frame. The only ways to make space lift cheaper are to reduce the effects of gravity or move without expending reaction mass and the Transcendence inertialess drive does neither.
And most bigger ships don't have drive plumes. So, by that indicator....
So now you're saying that you shouldn't get prices by scaling up the existing drives? Then how will you price propulsion for larger ships? If you just leave it out your numbers will become even more worthless.
No, I just think that it will be within the allowance I already gave for the hull costs.
It looks like George is being inconsistent here. The masses of the Scarab, EI500, and EI100m appear to include the cargo mass. The mass of the Korolov freighters clearly do not. Especially compare the EI100 in korolov.xml to the EI100m in transcendence.xml. In 0.7, which is the only pre-korolov resource set I have, the EI100 is the same mass as the EI100m remains. It was re statted when the other freighters were added, but the superfreighter was not.
Tell me about it. For another example, the mass of a non-playership wolfen is only 20 tons.

Oh, if you have a suggestion for a formula for costs, you're more than welcome to give it to me, so I can put it in the new spreadsheet.
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Atarlost
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Amilir wrote:
The thing about education is that the price the market will bear is linked to the expected earnings of the educated. If increases in productivity increase lifetime earnings the price of education will expand to keep college administrators in the upper class.
That doesn't apply if everyone is educated.
Unfortunately not true. Universal education just means the demand is even higher and more inelastic.
Ah! Ferian warriors! Thank you!
You enter into a vast chamber, only partially pressurized. Large metal maws consume a small fortune in rocks and ores delivered by Ferian miners. Beneath them you see various vessels shrouded by the cranes and girders of a shipyard. Most of the vessels are new Ferian miners being created out of raw materials. A few are much larger and have a more sinister shape.
There. We have a description of a shipyard, and it's both in a building, and partially pressurized. Also, t55, drakes, aurochs, dwarg behemoth... LOTS of ships have what appear to be section lines.
That is an error on George's part. Pressurizing a shipyard that size is an engineering impossibility. The problem is that you need to get the ship out of the yard. You can evacuate the yard, but it takes time. More importantly you can't do it perfectly. Losing something the size of a two car garage fill to one millibar is one thing. Losing something the size of a stadium full to one millibar is an air loss no space station can afford to do repeatedly, and that's the main docking bay, which means it needs to be evacuated and repressurized every time a ship delivers ore.


Why would all the sections have to be the same? When you're making fifty ships, you can still make one part fifty times even if it isn't used more than once per ship.
If the parts aren't interchangeable you don't actually save anything building them separately. If you build them in unpressurized spaces you don't make the work easier. Building a hundred different factories for different ship sections just complicates the logistics.
You might have a point here. On the other hand, you still haven't shown that workers earn a significant wage. Besides, even with a significant wage, how much work can a human do for that wage? I'd bet a lot.
You'd lose that bet. Ship building is too sensitive for long shifts. The more tired the workers the more likely something catastrophic happens. A twisted O-ring. A bad weld that pops under repeated strain. A backup anything that's not properly installed. You can eat the losses from a tenth of a percent of small gunships breaking within the first dozen flights. Bigger ships have more parts to be mis-installed. If one in a million welds is going to fail under stress over the lifetime of a ship then a gunship with a thousand welds will fail about one time in a thousand and you'll be out a gunship. A capital ship with a million welds will fail a lot more often and you'll be out a capital ship.
Oh, if you have a suggestion for a formula for costs, you're more than welcome to give it to me, so I can put it in the new spreadsheet.
There is no formula. That's the whole point. We can't make a formula without knowing the real value of the credit, the difficulty of labor in a space suit more advanced than the constant volume joint NASA relics, the regulatory environment, labor laws, and countless other things that can severely effect the price of the finished product. All we can say is that a large component of the price is proportionate to mass.
Literally is the new Figuratively
Amilir
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Unfortunately not true. Universal education just means the demand is even higher and more inelastic.
That must be why public schooling is so expensive, eh?
That is an error on George's part. Pressurizing a shipyard that size is an engineering impossibility. The problem is that you need to get the ship out of the yard. You can evacuate the yard, but it takes time. More importantly you can't do it perfectly. Losing something the size of a two car garage fill to one millibar is one thing. Losing something the size of a stadium full to one millibar is an air loss no space station can afford to do repeatedly, and that's the main docking bay, which means it needs to be evacuated and repressurized every time a ship delivers ore.
I'm sure I could list loads of other things that are impossible as we know it in the transcendence universe. Canon beats speculation. Have you never heard of an airlock? For the sake of argument, we know the price of liquid oxygen is 80 creds a ton, maybe twice that if we're really, really generous with the packaging. One billion cubic meters of oxygen, at 1 millibar and 30 C, contains ~1.3 million kg. From there we get ~200,000 credits of oxygen for 1 bil m^3. But that's a ridiculous amount of air! You could contain multiple CSCs in that space easily enough. Nah, it's reasonable. Most especially if you build a ship in parts and assemble it outside, as I've been saying.
If the parts aren't interchangeable you don't actually save anything building them separately. If you build them in unpressurized spaces you don't make the work easier. Building a hundred different factories for different ship sections just complicates the logistics.
Sure, but even with your requirements, robots could easily build each section that way.
You'd lose that bet. Ship building is too sensitive for long shifts. The more tired the workers the more likely something catastrophic happens. A twisted O-ring. A bad weld that pops under repeated strain. A backup anything that's not properly installed. You can eat the losses from a tenth of a percent of small gunships breaking within the first dozen flights. Bigger ships have more parts to be mis-installed. If one in a million welds is going to fail under stress over the lifetime of a ship then a gunship with a thousand welds will fail about one time in a thousand and you'll be out a gunship. A capital ship with a million welds will fail a lot more often and you'll be out a capital ship.
Ignoring the ridiculous idea that a ship will fail from one weld, my point was that between the enhancement I brought up, and the education you brought up, a worker should be able to do more than a worker on earth today.
There is no formula. That's the whole point. We can't make a formula without knowing the real value of the credit, the difficulty of labor in a space suit more advanced than the constant volume joint NASA relics, the regulatory environment, labor laws, and countless other things that can severely effect the price of the finished product. All we can say is that a large component of the price is proportionate to mass.
There is no formula. That's the whole point. We can't make a formula without knowing the real value of the credit, the difficulty of labor in a space suit more advanced than the constant volume joint NASA relics, the regulatory environment, labor laws, and countless other things that can severely effect the price of the finished product. All we can say is that a large component of the price is proportionate to mass.[/quote]
I do believe we are done here. Come back when you have a suggestion for costs that you believe is better than mine.
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Atarlost
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I can't let this slide. It demonstrates, really, why your price estimates are futile. You're not looking underneath the surface.
Amilir wrote:
Unfortunately not true. Universal education just means the demand is even higher and more inelastic.
That must be why public schooling is so expensive, eh?
http://www.nsf.gov/statistics/seind10/c8/c8s1o11.htm

I don't particularly call those prices cheap. Remember that if we're talking highly educated we're mostly talking the west coast and north-east which are above the median of around 9000$ per student.

Just because you're not paying for it out of pocket doesn't make it cheap. The thing about public education is that childless people are subsidizing it.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/mobile/uk-wales-12280492
And to not be americentric England's median per pupil spending is £6,199, which according to Wolfram Alpha is just under ten thousand dollars. A Welsh education comes in at a hair over nine thousand dollars.

Those are per year figures mind you. A twelfth grade education is twelve times that. That median American education costs over a hundred thousand dollars. A hundred thousand dollars just to train someone to work the checkout counter at the local grocer. Even a Utah education is more than 2/3 of a million.
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Atarlost wrote: That is an error on George's part. Pressurizing a shipyard that size is an engineering impossibility. The problem is that you need to get the ship out of the yard. You can evacuate the yard, but it takes time. More importantly you can't do it perfectly. Losing something the size of a two car garage fill to one millibar is one thing. Losing something the size of a stadium full to one millibar is an air loss no space station can afford to do repeatedly, and that's the main docking bay, which means it needs to be evacuated and repressurized every time a ship delivers ore.
so Atarlost i take it you have been to 2500 and studied engineering form the school in stk to find that thats a "engineering impossibility".....

No wait you haven't.
So you wouldn't know what a "engineering impossibility" would be when they were built
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Amilir
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Those are per year figures mind you. A twelfth grade education is twelve times that. That median American education costs over a million dollars. A million dollars just to train someone to work the checkout counter at the local grocer. Even a Utah education is more than 2/3 of a million.
Those numbers are shockingly high. Luckily, that's only because you can't do math. :D
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Atarlost
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They're still shockingly high. Remember that your claim is that the universalization of education does not drive up the cost. In fact you implied that it would reduce it. The average private Catholic school nationwide costs less than the per pupil spending in Utah, the cheapest state in the union. http://www.ncea.org/news/annualdatareport.asp Catholic schools have a reputation for giving better education that public schools and do so at a far lower price. You can't hold up public schooling as an exemplar of cheapness.

And if claim you've never seen a college level math or physics teacher drop a digit or variable when transcribing I don't believe you. In my experience it happens several times a semester.
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Amilir
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They're still shockingly high. Remember that your claim is that the universalization of education does not drive up the cost. In fact you implied that it would reduce it. The average private Catholic school nationwide costs less than the per pupil spending in Utah, the cheapest state in the union. http://www.ncea.org/news/annualdatareport.asp Catholic schools have a reputation for giving better education that public schools and do so at a far lower price. You can't hold up public schooling as an exemplar of cheapness.
That wasn't the idea. The idea was that government regulation would keep education prices from jumping. It seems like time to attack the base assumption here though. You suggested that a worker would require the equivalent of a master's to construct ships. That is, SIX YEARS of education. To construct ships. I've already demonstrated that the assumption of everything being done in a vacuum is wrong. Maybe up to a year of specific training in the profession would be reasonable. Once you factor in increased lifetime, an extra year of learning isn't a bigger proportion.
And if claim you've never seen a college level math or physics teacher drop a digit or variable when transcribing I don't believe you. In my experience it happens several times a semester.
It's common practice to double-check your numbers in a debate. :wink:
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alterecco
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I have split the offtopic commentary on the discussion into another post
http://neurohack.com/transcendence/foru ... f=6&t=3863

Please keep the comments that do not deal with ship prices in that post. Thanks
Tobiusinamour
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I am working out the prices to all the Korolov ships, and the player ships (and possibly expand on Commonwealth). I currently have 17 tabs open, recording figures off the wiki. :lol:
Total List of ships:

Wolfen-
C: 20 tons 15 p/ton= 300
S: Monopole= 1200
A: Polyceramic 600 x 4= 2400
W: Dual trbolaser= 3500
Launcher: NAMI= 1000
R: 10 MW= 1000?
T: 9400 credits. A lot for a little ship
Plus ammo- avg. 20 missiles= 300
A total of nearly 10,000, more than double a trader of 10x the weight!

Saphire-
C:30x 15= 450
S: Class I deflector= 350
A: Reactive armour-150x 4= 600
W: Recoilless Cannon- 300
R: 15 MW- 1800?
T: 3500.

EI-100-
Chassis:200x15=3000
Sheild: Class I Deflector= 300
Armour: 4x Light Reactive= 300
Weapons: Laser Cannon= 350
Reactor: Think its 5 MW= 600
Total: 4550 credits.

EI-200-
C: 200x15= 3000
S:Class 1 deflector= 300
A:6x reactive armour= 900
W: Boldie= 500
R:5-10MW=600-1200
T: 5300-5900

EI-500(A player ship)-
C: 250 x 15= 3,750
S: Class III= 1500
A: Advanced Reactive Armour(600) x 4= 2400
W: Omni Trbo.laser= 3500
R: 25 MW= 3000
T: 14,150 credits

EI-700-
C: 850 tons 15= 12,750
S: Class III- 1500
A: Advanced Reactive Armour(600) x 12= 7200
W: Turbo Laser Cannon= 1500
R: 25 MW= 3000
T: 25, 950

ANTARES V-
C: 2000 x 15= 30,000
S: None
A: Light Plasteel(200) x 24= 4800
W: 3 x AK15 Partisan= 4500
R: 25 MW= 3000
T: 42,300

ANTARES II-
C: 1200 x 15 per/ton= 18,000
S: None
A: 12 x Light Plasteel (200) = 2400
W: Heavy Recoilless Cannon= 550
R: 10 MW= 1000
T: 21,950

ANTARES I-
C: 15,000
S: none
A: 1200
W: Recoilless Cannon= 300
R: 10-15MW= 1,500
T: 18,000
They need to spend more on their 'top of the line' freighter. Titanium barricades would be twice as good.

SCARAB SF-
C: 15 x 20,000= 300,000
S: None
A: 26 x Advanced Reactive= 14,400
W: Slam Cannon= 32,000
R: 25 MW= 4000
T: 350,400
Plus ICX: (8000)= 358,400
I suppose the clue is in the name: SUPER freighter.

T31 Armed Transport-
C: 250 tons=2250
S: None- BAD move
A: Light Plasteel(200) x 4= 800
W:R. Smart Cannon=1300/ Recoilless= 300
R: 10 MW= 1000
T: 5,650. Could do with a shield, and better armor, and better weapons.

Ferian Miner-
C: 350 tons x 15= 1400
S: None
A:L. Plasteel= 200 x 4= 800
W: Plasma Torch= 18,000
R: 35-50 MW?= 5,500
T: 25, 700

Ferian Warrior-
C: 2145 tons x 15 credits a ton= 32,175
S: None
A: 12x Heavy Blast Plate(5000 each)= 60,000
W: Ferian Plasma Cannon= 18,000
R: 50 MW= 5,500
T: 115, 675. More than a Centurion/X! (Just)

And the Salvager Nomad-
C: 5000 x 15= 75,000
S: None
A: 36 x Double Titanium Barricade(500)= 18000
W: Turbo-laser cannon= 1500
R: 15 MW?= 1800
T: 96,300. WOW MORE THAN I THOUGHT. A Centurion/X is only 15,000 more!
Maybe they don't use titanium in the chassis, that would lower the price a fair amount.
(I can't imagine what the fuel needed to power that would be)

Just found out from https://forums.kronosaur.com/viewtopic. ... ics#p41190 that 1 credit is worth $10.88. Or £8.27 (i will use the pound)
So the cost of ships in £-

Wolfen-
9400 x 8.27= £77,738

Saphire-
3500 x 8.27= £28, 945

EI-100-
4550 x 8.27= £37, 628.50

EI-200-
5600 x 8.27= £46, 312

EI-500-
14,150 x 8.27= £117, 020.50

EI-700-
25,950 x 8.27= £214,606.50

Antares V=
42,300 x 8.27= £355196.50

Antares II=
21,950 x 8.27 = £181,526. 50

Antares I=
18,000 x 8.27= £146, 860

Scarab SF=
358,400 x 8.27= 2,963,968

T31 Armed Transport
5,650 x 8.27= 46,725.50
Last edited by Tobiusinamour on Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:33 am, edited 2 times in total.
Tobiusinamour
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And I have decided to work out if the what the price of manufacturing autons would be. Why Not!

1M/i=
Chassis: 4 tons x 15 per/ton= 60
Shield: Monopole= 1200
Armour: 1x light blast plate= 1100
Weapon: EMP cannon= 6000
T: 8360- Sells for: 7500 BARGAIN!

1M=
Chassis: 4x15= 60
Shield: Monopole= 1200
Armour: 1x light blast plate= 1100
Weapon: Partical Beam Weapon= 3200
Total: 5560- Sells for: 5000 Slight bargain

330M Mule=
C: 2 x 15= 30
S:Hull plate ionizer= 900
A: 2 x Plasteel(400)= 800
W: None
T: 1730- Sells for: 2500. Not bargain

AutoSentiel®=
C: 1 x 15= 15
S: None
A: Heavy Ceramic Armour (x 1)= 300
W: Laser Cannon= 300
T: 615- Sells for: 490+ ~ish~ Bargain

310A Aegis Auton=
C: 2 x15= 30
S: Hull Plate Ionizer= 900
A: 1 x 400 credit plasteel= 400
W: Laser Cannon= 250
Utilities= Longreach I autocannon= 30,000
T: 31,580= 90% of the price is the longreach- Sells for: 2,500. Yes two-thousand five hundred! That would be O.K if there was no long-reach! BARGAIN!

300D defender-
C: 15 a ton. 2 tons= 30
S: Hull plate ionizer= 900
A: 1 x Plassteel= 400
W: Turbolaser= 1500
T: 2,830- Sells for= 2000- Good deal

Mostly good deals. But maybe the manufacturers get stuff at a cheaper price? Or buy in bulk.
Last edited by Tobiusinamour on Mon Oct 30, 2017 9:04 am, edited 1 time in total.
PLEASE NOTE: WHN THINGS ANNOY ME OR ARE IN MY WAY, THEY GO BOOM!
(i have the quntum sphere and the locrym avallanche cannon(and a personal bodyguard of 10 1Mi's and 8 1m's.
NMS
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First, this thread was almost 7 years old.

Second, I think they were trying to estimate the cost of building ships in a more realistic way, taking into account the cost of the hull, drive, labor, etc., not just the removable devices.

Third, don't bother with the autons, I already have that info in a spreadsheet. If you really want the total value of the equipment of other ships, I could write a script that would calculate it for any or all of them.
Attachments
autons.zip
(10.75 KiB) Downloaded 174 times
Tobiusinamour
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I am fine working them all out by hand. I have this grand plan to do EVERY single ship on the wiki. So this thread might get quite a bit longer. It may take a while.

Also, I cant find anything about the TX3 explorer and the defective auton on the wiki. Where did you find it?
PLEASE NOTE: WHN THINGS ANNOY ME OR ARE IN MY WAY, THEY GO BOOM!
(i have the quntum sphere and the locrym avallanche cannon(and a personal bodyguard of 10 1Mi's and 8 1m's.
relanat
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Could you do the EI100/M as well please? The code's in the game somewhere. Thanks for this. I've been wondering what to charge for my Freighter Autons. :D
Stupid code. Do what I want, not what I typed in!
NMS
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A lot of the wiki is pretty out of date. You can get the game data by decompiling the files or downloading them from gitHub.

Also, this kind of thing is much quicker to get via a TLisp function. Here's one I just wrote, and the result. (This only gets the value of one possible configuration for ships with variable equipment, but there aren't many and getting all of them, or some sort of average, would actually be tricky.)

Code: Select all

			(setq getShipClassItemValues (lambda Nil
				(block (output)
					(enum (typFind 's) theType
						(setq output (cat output "\r\n" (mathDecToHex theType) ", "
										(typGetProperty theType 'name) ", "
										(apply + (map (append (typGetProperty theType 'armorItems) (typGetProperty theType 'deviceItems)) theItem (itmGetPrice theItem 'credit)))
										)
							)
						)
					(printTo 'log output)
					)
				))
Attachments
Ship Item Values.csv
(6.13 KiB) Downloaded 165 times
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