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Star Army Roleplay Pricing standards and Guidelines

Kai

Kai

Retired Staff
Hello Everybody! This thread is, specifically, aimed at those of us on SARP who have created, manage, run, or are otherwise involved with corporations, companies, and businesses on SARP. I've spoken to a few of you on the Discord in the past about this, but it has come up again that our companies are really, really bad at pricing large objects, specifically star ships, but also things like cars, fighters, mecha, and what have you.

As such, I would like to create a discussion that could lead to a set of standards or guidelines that we, as technology and setting element creators, can use to price our wares fairly, competetively, or at the very least rationally. As a start, I'd love to hear at least a few of you tech contributors weigh in on your thoughts of the setting, so, I will start with mine:

As a whole, SARP has this unspoken need to make every piece of technology in some way 'affordable' to the average player. this, I think, is nonsense, and while I do understand that with different currency values, things are not going to be priced the same as they are in the real world, however, bigger objects do need to have prices in scale with their size, or technology level, or production volumes, etc. Star ships are one of the most egregious at this, especially since, as we all know, if someone wants a specific ship for a plot, they will get one, and it really doesn't matter in that sense if it's affordable or not. However, if something is too affordable, then characters who don't need, say, a 1000m starship, should probably not be able to afford one from their wages in the Star army.
 
I think some good things to consider for pricing are:

Ship size/ class
Civilian/military use (civilian corps cant build above T-12, But military intended ships with civilian versions like a destroyer that can be stripped and sold to the public should cost more because it was military use.)
Company size (Origin for instance because of their size and capability can sell for more compared to Shasta No Sekai who are nobodies and have no business in the ship market so would be selling for mere pennies)
Materials used (such as if its a combat capable ship and has armor heavier than light armor it should cost more.)
Type (A ship that carries freight should cost less than a ship that can be a warship or carrier, etc.)
As well as tech obviously making it cost more or tech making it cost more .

My proposal however is to find 1-2 ships in each class size and make a kind of chart that's a high/low example and put them in a chart on the wiki or table to something.

Like Example 1 is a small ship of 230m long and blah blah blah and is from a relatively small company from the NDC and cost 100,000 KS/ 200,000 DA. Ship example 2 is around the same size but has X/y/z making it cost more and is from origin and is around 250,00ks /500,000 DA. And that's a good bracket for that ship class to be around.
 
This seems to be a case of balancing 'realism' with 'RP function'. Characters need to have some entry point to be able to do things like this, and not everyone can collect half a million KS for a ship. It's tricky, but the latter criterion shouldn't be forgotten.
 
Well, if we have the prices be high, there's always the salvage lotto! Seriously, though, it's probably better if characters can't instantly afford everything, because it's good for character development if characters have goals to work for (or people to pay back money to!).

With my price index WIP I tried to use existing prices as a starting point.
 
Things to keep in mind:
  1. Energy is trivial. Even people without Aether have easy access to fusion power.
  2. With enough energy, you can do almost anything, to include turn one type of material into another.
  3. Most fabrication is completely automated, often down to the nano-scale
  4. Industry is centered around space travel to the extent that real world industry is centered around cars and trucks. Economy of scale to a degree that is difficult to imagine is in effect.
That's the thing about "realism" is that SARP isn't intuitively extrapolatable. Spacecraft are expensive in the real world because they are all low-production, if not uniquely bespoke, and require resources, knowledge, and energy that are multiple orders of magnitude more scarce. There's nothing "realistic" about very, very expensive spacecraft unless there's a conspiracy to fix prices.
 
I wholeheartedly agree with Wes. Stuff like starships, is something that a player character can aspire to affording, or take out a loan for, or buy from salvage one piece at a time, something they can build up between plots/ missions, what have you. Also, the majority of the time, If a character needs a ship, it's typically a GMPC, and that character will have one regardless; again, it can come with caveats of being salvaged, secondhand, or lots of debt, whatever the plot requires, which can add to the interest of the story, in my opinion.

Some Player characters have a chance of being around long enough to afford stuff, Others are given wealth or equipment via RP. Sometimes that character can build up said wealth through other means. For example, Aerin Tatst, who is now arguably one of the wealthiest and most influential characters in the Kikyo sector, first showed up in RP as a stowaway aboard a cargo ship, roughly 14 years ago. Through RP, and alots of hard work both IC and OOC, she became what she is now, though she has long since ceased being just a player character.

As for Yuuki; My take on spacecraft is to compare them to their closest IRL counterparts, which would be oceanic ships; the prices on those are often in the tens of millions of USD. WHile I agree on our free, easy energy, as well as economies of scale, I still think that our prices are entirely too low, or at least have been historically, Even with the factors that you cited; something like Origin Industries' caravan heavy freighter being 600,000 KS is reasonable for the setting. However, if I tried to sell it for, say, 100,000 KS, that would be ludicrously underpriced.
 
Their closest IRL counterparts are the cars you see on the road every day. That was my point.
 
For things like shuttles, and small craft, I agree, however, large things like Warships, cargo vessels, and the like, not so much. A basic shuttle costing 4K KS makes sense as that's the equivalent of buying a used Camry, however, people don't just go around buying tanks and cargo ships on an everyman's salary.
 
For cargo ships, that there are few customers, even fewer manufacturers, and correspondingly low production and small industrial base to produce them is a bigger factor in their expensiveness than their size. And let's not forget the effect of not having to deal with surface gravity has on the ease of constructing large things.
 
I don't think anyone is saying that something like the kinds of rockets we use today would be expensive. But the types of starships that SARP uses are magnitudes more complicated, generally quite a lot larger. Buying yourself something like a Caravan would be to most characters what buying a luxury yacht would be like for most real people.
 
Alex Hart said:
The types of starships that SARP uses are magnitudes more complicated, generally quite a lot larger.
Click to expand...
So are the industrial base, economy, and population. They are scaled up by possibly even more orders of magnitude. This is a very critical point that you have left unaddressed.
 
That scaling up is likely the only reason that starships cost up to millions instead of up to dozens of millions.
 
That depends on what scaled more.
 
I did some research into the closest thing to something like the Caravan is for today's technology, which would be a panamax cargo ship; the average price on one of those is around $50 million USD. so even looking at 600k KS for a Caravan, that's already factoring in every single objection you have, Yuuki.
 
You're just comparing sizes. There are only a couple shipyards in the world who make them. That's the thing. The fact that Origin can crank out stuff at the rate it can, or KFY, or whoever, is the issue. The Panamax ship is not the analogue to the caravan because it isn't produced at a mass-market scale. There's no conglomerate out there with a mass production line for cargo ships. Your Caravan is more like a diesel locomotive.


And another thing, let's not forget at this scale, it doesn't matter if an everyman can afford one of something, because in a world as big as the SARPiverse, its impact is asymptotic to zero. You need to be able to afford a thousand, or more.
 
Do we really need to have rules for pricing? I feel like there are enough rules pertaining to starship design already and that we don't need to make it more complicated than it already is. If you want to make a cheap starship, make a cheap starship and justify why it's cheap in the submission. If you want an expensive starship, do the same, but vice-versa.
 
Lets remember this whole topic is just to keep continuity not argue whataboutism.

it keep fairness and keeps peoples work on the wiki relevant so a nice ship article doesn't get appreciated or ever used for those of us who actually put a number on our corps finances and just don't have infinite money for ships and stuff.

That was it gives certain tiers for goals to acquire for corps and players that aren't big like mine. This isnt supposed to be an argument but a simple What makes sense to cost what kind of conversation and to help in the creation process to give people all the resources possible. It also only covers a small portion of ships in the setting considering at least 7/10 ships made are military which 99% of the time dont require a price tag because they are military use only.
 
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