Kimo Hardy

@gmjapan,think you're quite right that the cost issue is between buying and building - thanks for nailing down the numbers. What you're correctly referring to as buying I was calling the time factor - that it happens immediately or almost immediately. These are the mechanics. However, there are issues with this from a game perspective: - is it true that replacing equipment is an equivalent task to building from scratch ? Obviously this is subjective and could be argued either way.<br

There certainly are a number of rational explanations as to why upgrading would cost more than just the price of components - certainly, time, location and the fact that reworking is not always less expensive than rebuilding are valid. But these are dependent on circumstances and can be argued either way - if it costs more in deep space, why more in the home port (tried that). Should there be more logic around this ? And if we are going to go with 'arguments from reality' well, loo

This is a pet peeve of mine as well since I do like to build up experience (as opposed to the RTS strategy of just generating hordes). I have a concrete example on the game screen in front of me: upgrading from a design costing 307 to a new version costing 480 (better weapons, armor and engine techs). the cost ? 1578, or as was said, abourt 4 times the value of the ship !!! While it is true that upgrading could have some inherent inefficiencies a factor of 300% seems e

Great question - another way of thinking about it is physical plant vs. capital. My understanding is that the 100% is how much of your income is spent on production - the actual amount of production this produces, however, is limited by the amount of physical plant (factories,etc.). So if Ford decides to run all it's factories at full capacity (and still has the money to do it) it will cos tthem 100% of the operating cost of the factory, not 100% of their income. If so, it's logic