New Mod - "Economies of Scale"

[Ed Kolis]

Economies of Scale Mod v1.1.0

This mod is inspired by an idea posted by Erax and Suicide Junkie on the Shrapnel forums that he suggested to improve realism in SE4 and balance out smaller vs. larger ships. The idea was this: ship strength stays fairly linear in proportion to size, but cost increases as the square of the size, representing the infrastructure necessary to construct large vessels, while maintenance increases as the square root of the size.

[ August 03, 2003, 22:46: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

*clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap clap*

[Taz-in-Space]

Ummm, Narf! You sure got a bad case of the 'clap' there!!!

[Ed Kolis]

What the... Narf registered five months ago and he has more Posts than me? SPAMMER!

(So, you like it or something? Shocked at the cost of those starbases? )

[narf poit chez BOOM]

was wondering how long it would be before someone made that joke. and i'm not a spammer. each and every single one of my Posts has a...nah, who am i trying to kid? i post jokes. i post a lot of jokes.

didn't look at it, just wanted to congratulate you on all your hard work. seemed like the thing to do.

ok, now i did.

the escort doesn't have a cost, the square root of 200 is 40000, so what did you mean by square of size? and the square root of 200 is 14, so what do you mean by square root of size for maintanence?
your destroyer tonnage is 4500

ok, so your subtracting about 15 resources per kiloton? that still doesn't explain the cost of the frigate.

[ August 02, 2003, 09:47: Message edited by: narf poit chez BOOM ]

[Erax]

Good job Ed. I have to download this and try it out.

The 'building cost increases with the square of the size' idea was mine, and to tell the truth I didn't give it a lot of deep thought when I wrote it, it just came off the top of my head. SJ came up with the maintenance cost progression.

Here's the original thread. See replies 5 and 6.

[Ed Kolis]

Narf narfed:
the escort doesn't have a cost, the square root of 200 is 40000, so what did you mean by square of size? and the square root of 200 is 14, so what do you mean by square root of size for maintanence?

The cost of a ship is PROPORTIONAL to the square of the size, and the maintenance is proportional to the square root; if you divide all the hull costs (plus the 15 minerals per kT for components) or the maintenance costs by the squares/square roots of the sizes, you get approximately the same number (1/10 in the case of the build costs, 100 in the case of the maintenance costs). If the build/maintenance costs were EQUAL to the square/square root of the hull size, then all the ships would cost a whole lot to build but only pay a tiny amount of maintance

your destroyer tonnage is 4500

Oops, I'll go fix that!

ok, so your subtracting about 15 resources per kiloton? that still doesn't explain the cost of the frigate.

The frigate looks all right to me... the square of the hull size is 40,000, I divide that by 10 to get 4,000 for the "average" frigate's build cost, then subtract 3,000 for the components to get 1,000 for the hull cost...

Now one thing I am worried about is people building up huge fleets of small ships because they're so cheap to build, but mothballing them as soon as they're built so they don't have to pay the exorbitant maintenance costs... of course this would mean when they do need the ships they couldn't field very many of them at a time, but they'd have a near-infinite reserve to replenish their losses... maybe I should increase the cost to unmothball to make this harder to do (sure, this would hit big ships harder, but big ships are practically impossible to unmothball anyway - who wants to pay 20,000 minerals PER dreadnought brought Online! ) Or maybe I should ask for an option to disable mothballing in settings.txt

edit: sorry Erax, I didn't realize it was your idea too! I just uploaded v1.0.1 and I don't want to go to the trouble of doing it again so next time remind me and I'll put your name in! BTW, I doubt this mod will work well with the standard AI's, as they tend to build the biggest ships possible no matter what, so if you want to test it out you might want to get some other players... hey, I'd be glad to give it a try!

[ August 02, 2003, 19:57: Message edited by: Ed Kolis ]

[narf poit chez BOOM]

ok, now it makes much more sense.

[Taera]

the starbase is worth HOW MUCH????????
seriously, arent the bigger ships are obsolete now? because a battleship can only do so much against 25 destroyers

[ August 03, 2003, 07:05: Message edited by: Taera ]

[Fyron]

Those 25 destroyers cost a lot more to maintain than one Battleship though.