Fix for HG econ error

[DFW]

Although overall I think the book is very good there are some illogical parts. For instance, the table below is the drive cost table. The cost portion as laid out is exactly the opposite of what REALLY happens as technology matures. For instance, a J-4 drive (TL-13) would cost LESS at higher tech levels. By quite a bit. I have changed the cost table as follows: <underlined>

TL –1 TL +0 TL +1 TL +2 TL+3
Tonnage 200% 100% 95% 90% 75%
Cost 150% 100% 110% 125% 200%


TL –1 TL +0 TL +1 TL +2 TL+3
150% 100% 80% 70% 60%

 

[Spike]

Hrm... I'm not sure but I think the costs are going up in High Guard because you are buying above the standard tech level... prototypes and such.

Of course I could be suffering data drift from the supply catalog.

 

[PFVA63]

Hi

I don't have High Guard in front of me right now, so I can't say for certain, but I thought crossed my mind reading the original post. Maybe the table in the book is meant to reflect the issue that once something is no longer state of the art, it might become a specialty item and hence the cost could go up.

For example, in the real world back in the hey day of steam, a steam locomotive or steam ship could probably be bought fairly economically. However, today if I wanted someone to build me a steam locomotive or steam powered cargo ship, the plant might be relatively fairly expensive because now there are no longer numerous companies around with that expertise. As such alot of components may have to be special built, etc. Or in other woulds, instead of being massed produced, some of the stuff might have to be built by "artisans", etc.

Anyway, just some thoughts.

Regards

PF

 

[dmccoy1693]

I do agree with the OP that tech comes down in price as it gets better IRL. However (and this is a big however), in game terms that does not make sense. There is no disincentive from always having the top of the line tech, ever. In real life we have limitation like: total number produced (if there are none available, you can't buy it), incompatibility problems (Macs and Alphas are better computers than Intel-Windows machines, but sell less because there is more software available for them that an emulator may not run as well), design differences (if two companies made jump drives, they would probably not make their parts interchangeable so when need to repair it, you have to go to their company for the part), discontinued product lines (forcing you to upgrade your equipment if you want it to keep working properly), etc. Games don't emulate that. Why, because they're boring and basically seen as the Ref being a **** to the players.

So the easiest way to take all that into account is to just increase the cost of newer tech. It balances out what newer tech does well with the availability of it.