Ship cost reduction as TL increases?

[phavoc]

Hi folks,

I have a question. I have not been able to find an answer in High Guard.

Let say you are building a brand new Jump-2 ship in a TL15 shipyard. Shouldn't there be a discount for really old, very well established technology?

Jump-2 drives are available at TL11. Given that the shipyard is building it at TL15, shouldn't the cost be reduced? Or the size be reduced?

To give a real world example, Earth is currently about TL7. "Modern" cartridge based firearms started to dominate the battlefields at TL3 (starting about the US Civil War, more or less). A modern TL7 (four TL later) automated factory could crank out thousands of high quality, very dependable firearms and exceptionally high quality controlled ammunition much more quickly, efficiently, and cheaply that a TL3 factory. Shouldn't there be some sort of cost reduction or quality bonus?

Am I missing a rule for cost reduction?

TTYL

- Kerry

That's probably too much of a jump to obtain a discount. If you look at modern things it generally gets more expensive the further away you are from the original process. Changing out one item usually doesn't work out that way because you have interfaces and such that have to be accommodated to make things work. Plus there is simply the lack of experience and understanding on how they built things then vs the standards today.

Example - a modern shipyard trying to build the SS Great Eastern (launched 1858). Or say the USS Alaska CB, launched 1943. The Great Eastern would be about TL5, and the Alaska TL 6-7 to our TL 8. But I doubt there are any workers in a shipyard that would know how to build an actual armored ship anymore (vs the welded aluminum crap we get today), let alone try to build a coal-powered ship that utilized sails, paddle wheels and a screw for propulsion. The gap is just too great to have usable knowledge on how to build something so far away.

But, let's say that we have a TL-15 Free Trader vs a TL-12 Free Trader. Supposedly the design has not varied far from it's original design since it was first created. However while the external aspects might not be changed much, I don't think that's fair that the internal ones didn't. As power plants, maneuver drives and jump drives have all undergone reductions, the locations and wiring processes are all different. A modern 737-9 is about the same length as a 707, yet it's got a lot more wiring, computers and other gadgets that the fully mechanical 707 does not. 737 assembly line workers would expect to install electrical flight controls and electrically-operated machinery for an aircraft, but the 707 used mechanical gauges, hydraulics and manually controlled ailerons and elevators. They would be at a great disadvantage trying to assemble one because they would not be experienced, which really should cause a cost inflation if you are building a ship that is not of the same TL as the shipyard you are at.

 

[Sageryne]

Well, I was using your +/- TL as part of the equation. A black powder musket is about 2 TL down from a TL 7 AR-15.

I have to say, Tech Levels are tricky beasts. Depending on the TL, they can cover some pretty broad time periods and if you look at some of the examples, modern-day Earth is all over the place...

Still, the AR-15 is a tech level 6 rifle (entering US service in 1964). "TL6 brings the development of fission power and more advanced computing. Advances in materials technology and rocketry bring about the dawn of the space age." Yep, that sounds like the '60s and 70s.

Three levels before that, TL3, covers a very broad era. "The advances of TL2 are now applied, bringing the germ of industrial revolution and steam power. Primitive firearms now dominate the battlefield. This is roughly comparable to the early 19th Century." TL2 is described as the Renaissance (15th and 16th century), so TL3 would start around the 17th century and end in the early 1800s... say up to 1850 (a very broad range). Flintlock muskets started coming into common use at the time, replacing the matchlocks and arquebus. The "Brown Bess" musket was used by the British Army from 1722 - 1838. The first firearms to use an integrated cartridge were French pin-fire guns invented in 1836. Percussion caps came into use in the British Army 1842 (still technically early 19th century). The Sharps Rifle, the first mass produced rifle to use an integrated cartridge (paper at first) was patented in 1848 and started manufacture in 1850.

If you say the introduction of the Sharps Rifle comes at the very end of TL3, then the US Civil War was fought with a mix of mostly TL3 weapons (muzzleloading muskets and rifles) and the very first TL 4 weapons (Sharps, Henry and the like).

Uggh... reading that over I sound very pedantic. Sorry about that.

Still, Traveller Tech Levels are by necessity rather vague and arbitrary. How can we know what will be the turning points of technology that will define a change in tech levels thousands of years (and many tech changes we can't even imagine) in the future?

- Kerry

 

[Sageryne]

That's probably too much of a jump to obtain a discount. If you look at modern things it generally gets more expensive the further away you are from the original process. Changing out one item usually doesn't work out that way because you have interfaces and such that have to be accommodated to make things work. Plus there is simply the lack of experience and understanding on how they built things then vs the standards today.

Example - a modern shipyard trying to build the SS Great Eastern (launched 1858). Or say the USS Alaska CB, launched 1943. The Great Eastern would be about TL5, and the Alaska TL 6-7 to our TL 8. But I doubt there are any workers in a shipyard that would know how to build an actual armored ship anymore (vs the welded aluminum crap we get today), let alone try to build a coal-powered ship that utilized sails, paddle wheels and a screw for propulsion. The gap is just too great to have usable knowledge on how to build something so far away.

But, let's say that we have a TL-15 Free Trader vs a TL-12 Free Trader. Supposedly the design has not varied far from it's original design since it was first created. However while the external aspects might not be changed much, I don't think that's fair that the internal ones didn't. As power plants, maneuver drives and jump drives have all undergone reductions, the locations and wiring processes are all different. A modern 737-9 is about the same length as a 707, yet it's got a lot more wiring, computers and other gadgets that the fully mechanical 707 does not. 737 assembly line workers would expect to install electrical flight controls and electrically-operated machinery for an aircraft, but the 707 used mechanical gauges, hydraulics and manually controlled ailerons and elevators. They would be at a great disadvantage trying to assemble one because they would not be experienced, which really should cause a cost inflation if you are building a ship that is not of the same TL as the shipyard you are at.

I think we are looking at this very differently.

Here is an example that I think encapsulates what I am thinking.

The Me-262 was the very first mass-produced jet powered fighter. It was cutting edge (realistically a mass produced prototype) aircraft for TL5. Most of them were destroyed during the war. The few remaining examples are priceless museum pieces. Of course, no museum would let you restore one and fly it. So, a group of enthusiasts formed the Me-262 Project and built five reproduction aircraft that could be flown. However, I am not interested in the aircraft, but rather its engine.

The original Me-262 used the Junker Jumo 004B, the first production turbojet (8000 built).

When the reproduction was built, they didn't build new Jumo engines. The prototype Jumo 004As had a lifespan of over 100 hours, but due to late war material shortages, the production Jumo 004Bs only had a 10 - 25 hour lifespan!

Instead, the reproduction uses a 1960s era General Electric CJ610 (typically used in Learjets). However, it has to have a governor on it, because the original Jumos only produced 1,848 lbf and the CJ-610 they used produced nearly double that, 3,100 lbf. To compound the problem, CJ610 only weighs 417 lb compared to the Jumo 004B's 1,642 lb. The "tiny" CJ610 only occupies a small fraction of the Me-262's huge engine nacelles.

So, imagine, the Me-262 is your Type A Beowulf. It is built at a TL12 world with perfectly good (for the TL) Jumo 004b manoeuvre drives. They weigh 1,642 lbs and produce 1,848 lbf of thrust.

Now, imagine you are building another Me-262 on a TL-15 world. They offer you the CJ610 manoeuvre drives. They weigh 25% the weight and produce 168% the thrust. This is the exact case described in High Guard, Customizing Ships page 71 - 72. You are getting an engine with reduced weight and increased thrust to weight (i.e. you can get a higher G drive for the same tonnage).

However, what I am asking is...

If I am having this ship built on a TL-15 world, and I am willing to accept 1,642 lb and only 1,848 lbf of thrust, then shouldn't that be cheaper (since it is effectively increased size)?

What I think should happen is that items should AUTOMATICALLY decrease in tonnage the longer they have been in service (especially three tech levels), and if you CHOOSE to take the disadvantage "Increased Size" then that is where you would get the savings.

Does that make sense?

- Kerry

 

[Condottiere]

1. I tend to view Imperium run starports to have technological level twelve parts available.

2. Apparently, the Imperium Scouts Service has no problems in procuring technological level eleven scoutships.

3. I considered the issue with the technological level nine Venture model jump drive, and came to the conclusion that the original production lines were preserved, and relocated.

 

[NOLATrav]

What I think should happen is that items should AUTOMATICALLY decrease in tonnage the longer they have been in service (especially three tech levels), and if you CHOOSE to take the disadvantage "Increased Size" then that is where you would get the savings.

Does that make sense?

I am so with you on this.

IMTU I took a page from T5 and created a standard and consistent TL paradigm, from Early (TL-2, 2 Disadvantages) to Advanced (TL+2, 2 Advantages) with Standard (TL+0) being what is listed in Core/CSC. Cost and Mass/Volume adjustments are baked in at each tier and you can mix and match to your heart’s content with the page of generic Dis/Advantages I’m working on.

So you can have an auto pistol from several TLs, one will be Bulky perhaps, another Inaccurate; one might be High Yield (extra damage) and another might have Extra Usage (increased ammo).

And so on, with vehicles, small craft and spaceships - every item or component you can choose to buy.

It’s working well so far. Last session someone said “Nah, not buying that here, they suck and imported ones are too pricey. We can mange for a few weeks til we get to X where they make decent ones.”

 

[phavoc]

I think we are looking at this very differently.

Here is an example that I think encapsulates what I am thinking.

The Me-262 was the very first mass-produced jet powered fighter. It was cutting edge (realistically a mass produced prototype) aircraft for TL5. Most of them were destroyed during the war. The few remaining examples are priceless museum pieces. Of course, no museum would let you restore one and fly it. So, a group of enthusiasts formed the Me-262 Project and built five reproduction aircraft that could be flown. However, I am not interested in the aircraft, but rather its engine.

The original Me-262 used the Junker Jumo 004B, the first production turbojet (8000 built).

When the reproduction was built, they didn't build new Jumo engines. The prototype Jumo 004As had a lifespan of over 100 hours, but due to late war material shortages, the production Jumo 004Bs only had a 10 - 25 hour lifespan!

Instead, the reproduction uses a 1960s era General Electric CJ610 (typically used in Learjets). However, it has to have a governor on it, because the original Jumos only produced 1,848 lbf and the CJ-610 they used produced nearly double that, 3,100 lbf. To compound the problem, CJ610 only weighs 417 lb compared to the Jumo 004B's 1,642 lb. The "tiny" CJ610 only occupies a small fraction of the Me-262's huge engine nacelles.

So, imagine, the Me-262 is your Type A Beowulf. It is built at a TL12 world with perfectly good (for the TL) Jumo 004b manoeuvre drives. They weigh 1,642 lbs and produce 1,848 lbf of thrust.

Now, imagine you are building another Me-262 on a TL-15 world. They offer you the CJ610 manoeuvre drives. They weigh 25% the weight and produce 168% the thrust. This is the exact case described in High Guard, Customizing Ships page 71 - 72. You are getting an engine with reduced weight and increased thrust to weight (i.e. you can get a higher G drive for the same tonnage).

However, what I am asking is...

If I am having this ship built on a TL-15 world, and I am willing to accept 1,642 lb and only 1,848 lbf of thrust, then shouldn't that be cheaper (since it is effectively increased size)?

What I think should happen is that items should AUTOMATICALLY decrease in tonnage the longer they have been in service (especially three tech levels), and if you CHOOSE to take the disadvantage "Increased Size" then that is where you would get the savings.

Does that make sense?

- Kerry

Yes, and that's kind of my point. Trying to build the Jumo engine would be time consuming and nuts when you could get something off the shelf that would work.

The problem is once you swapped out engines you've now changed the aircraft. Lets say for discussion sake you are able to take the existing Jumo engine housing and place a better engine inside of it, so you don't have any external aerodynamic changes. However it's a different size, so you have to make an internal housing to hold it in place. Your control and wiring and fuel line interfaces are now all different and all have to be modified. Will the gauges in the cockpit be compatible? Will the weight distribution require additional tweaks to the aircraft? And you've now got a frankenstein craft.

The shrinking of the footprint of things is inevitable for most items (some things like vents and water/sewer lines remain the same as those items would not change even though the size of your life support system might). That free's up space, but it should also start to cause other problems that you have to accommodate and you start losing certain cost advantages (and some actually can go up). Say you are installing a modern server that required optical cabling as the brains of your 1979 house. Unless you update all the other interfaces you can't make optical connections work over a co-ax or even token-ring network. And if you are able to build interfaces to make it work you then are limited to the speed of your network while a lot of capacity remains unusable on your modern server.

I think the book probably doesn't take into account of tech changes and all the little things that go into making the big thing. Unless your workforce is knowledgeable and has the tools and experience, they should actually require more effort to do the work. This would hold true up or down the TL scale until they gained the requisite knowledge and experience.

The argument would be different if say you took out a 1960s battery and replaced it one from 1980. Assuming your voltages remained the same then your more modern battery would be lighter and last longer. But that's a relatively simple thing. Building a very complex thing like a starship isn't a fair comparison.

 

[Sageryne]

I think we are talking past each other.

In the example, it is not a TL12 Me-262 being retrofitted with TL15 engines. It is building a new TL-15 Me-262 using new TL15 engines. The plane was built, from the ground up knowing they were going to use the modern engine. All the electronics, controls, and systems were design from the beginning for the better engine.

The point is, the TL15 engine is lighter and more powerful.

My hypothesis that things get smaller and better over time as a baseline assumption (I recognize not everything can get smaller, but we are talking engines and power plants for the most part in High Guard). Therefore, the TL15 engine would be smaller and more powerful than the engine that powered its TL12 ancestor. I will concede that some things get bigger. Modern high-bypass turbofans are WAY bigger than their earlier turbojet predecessors, but that is because they produce way more thrust, while being more fuel efficient, so they have made different trade-offs.

If you accept the assumption that things get smaller over time, then following the Customizing Ships section of High Guard, you could take the disadvantage of increased size to be able to build a bulkier...but cheaper...engine at TL15.

You don't have to accept this assumption. I am not trying to make you. You can run your Traveller the way you like. I am just saying that I think Mongoose should add a rule that acknowledges that equipment gets better in the centuries after the technology is introduced.

 

[Condottiere]

I can't say that I'm anywhere knowledgeable about this, but you probably haver to look at how stuff is produced in the originating technological level, and the one where you currently wish to reproduce the item in question.

Engineering is pretty linear in Traveller.

Power plants are basically variations of fusion reactors with improved energy output.

Manoeuvre drives have a uniform thrust to weight, potential thrust capped by manufactured technological level.

Jump drive has a five tonne overhead, plus uniform capacitors, and a uniform core, whose potential performance is capped by manufactured technological level.

Though, I suppose this also somewhat applies to the power plant.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The "Me262 was a prototype" is everything I dislike about the modern interpretation of TLs.

A production Me262 is TL6 end of. The Gloucester Meteor and the American P 80 were produced at almost the same time - are they prototypes too?
No.

The Me262 was still being used in the early 50s by the Czech air force and the Israelis.

When the jet engine was developed in the 30s that's where you have your prototyping. A full operational jet fighter means you have made it to TL6 in jet technology. The early TL6 fighters were replaced by better, more mature TL6 fighters, but there wasn't a TL between them.

I prefer to add subscripts to denote experimental and prototype for a given TL, but the whole point of a TL increase is that once you can build it you have achieved that TL.

You don't build TL14 experimental jump 6 drives. You build experimental TL15 _ex and you have now achived the bare minimum to call yourself TL15.
An even better way is to use a decimilisation of the TL scale, and to allow a culture to be at different TLs for different technologies.

Now I know I am rambling and ranting so I will shut up.

Note - is there anyway to enable superscript and subscript as it is on the CotI boards please?

 

[Condottiere]

Prototype.

Early prototype.


To be fair, I don't recall Vehicles having prototypes.

 

[Vormaerin]

There's nothing wrong with prototypes as a concept. But it shouldn't be "we can make these things, they are just larger/more expensive/less efficient". If they can be produced in quantity and work reliably, even if inferior to the standard, they are the TL in question.

TL is fuzzy, so having a Zefram Cochrane analogue make a sketchy kind of working Jump drive when the world is technically one TL lower. But once you can make them in quantity, up goes the TL.

Prototypes make a lot more sense when you are homebrewing your technology in isolation. But most Traveller universes (and certainly in Charted Space), that's not gonna happen. You know the thing works, because space dudes are around using it. Maybe you can't make it locally, but you aren't experimenting with the jump drive. You are just experimenting with the manufacturing. And maybe not even that.

It is easy to think of TLs as Earth eras. But it is important to keep in mind that 98% of the planets out there were settled by spacefarers and had TL 10ish tech when they arrived, regardless of what they have now. And they have contact with people who have even more tech, even if they can't make it. The folks on the planet may find it more efficient to use miniphants than maintain the infrastructure for trucks, but that doesn't really have anything to say about their spaceflight capabilities. Because the starport and the asteroid mines and whatnot are run by offworld traders, the Imperium, or whatever. And the planet folks will find the means to buy those things that are essential. Even if that's a TL 12 Fusion power plant and the offworlder service contract to keep it running so their TL 6 farms have power without needing fossil fuel infrastructure.

Of course, if you are creating a setting where there isn't significant space trade and more worlds bootstrapped themselves up like Earth, then that's a different issue.

 

[Arkathan]

Prototypes also make sense with non-Imperials. Like Sword World Jarls reverse engineering TL 13/14 gear for their ships. Local production steampunking TL 12 electronics into TL 13 effects will remain a prototype until the world figures out how to produce the TL 13 components... even if enough ships/vehicles with the prototypes are produced to get the -10% for standard designs.

 

[NOLATrav]

An even better way is to use a decimilisation of the TL scale, and to allow a culture to be at different TLs for different technologies.

Yes. Been playing with this idea as well, if a world warrants the detail. Energy, Habitat, Transport, Electronics, Robotics, Military - using a few flux rolls and a TL7 world may have aspects of its infrastructure and economy ranging from TL5 fo TL9. Kind of like how present day Earth at TL7 is probably TL8 in Electronics and Medicine.

 

[phavoc]

I think we are talking past each other.

In the example, it is not a TL12 Me-262 being retrofitted with TL15 engines. It is building a new TL-15 Me-262 using new TL15 engines. The plane was built, from the ground up knowing they were going to use the modern engine. All the electronics, controls, and systems were design from the beginning for the better engine.

The point is, the TL15 engine is lighter and more powerful.

My hypothesis that things get smaller and better over time as a baseline assumption (I recognize not everything can get smaller, but we are talking engines and power plants for the most part in High Guard). Therefore, the TL15 engine would be smaller and more powerful than the engine that powered its TL12 ancestor. I will concede that some things get bigger. Modern high-bypass turbofans are WAY bigger than their earlier turbojet predecessors, but that is because they produce way more thrust, while being more fuel efficient, so they have made different trade-offs.

If you accept the assumption that things get smaller over time, then following the Customizing Ships section of High Guard, you could take the disadvantage of increased size to be able to build a bulkier...but cheaper...engine at TL15.

You don't have to accept this assumption. I am not trying to make you. You can run your Traveller the way you like. I am just saying that I think Mongoose should add a rule that acknowledges that equipment gets better in the centuries after the technology is introduced.

For a simple thing, like say the AR-15, it's still not completely straightforward. One of the reasons the AR-15 analogues are relatively cheap today is a combination of factors - mass production lowers costs, it's now a civilian rather than a military rifle and thus has to be more cost-competitive than a military item, and changes to the weapon have lowered the cost per item. To be fair here, the original AR-15 was about $800 in the early 80s (my brother bought one while I was in the service and it was nearly an exact duplicate). It was pretty much the only version you could get then. Today you can buy some as cheap as $300ish to over $2k, depending on what you wanted in it. Average cost of the M4 military variant is supposed to be around $700 in 2012, and$650 in 2015. There's been more manufacturers other than Colt to make it, though I could not say just how much the parts of the weapons are interchangeable with other models.

Traveller TL are pretty fuzzy, and their costing models are both fuzzy AND somewhat questionable. For me, personally, I see the discount provided to ships from list cost as ass-backwards. I didn't question it much before, but when I started doing some analysis of it I realized that the cost of the item should be the book price for the combined components, and the first models built should incur the total cost PLUS an upcharge since it's a new model to accurately reflect the increased labor and costs associated with starting to build something new. Only after you standardize things and get all your production kinks worked out would your costs come down to what the books consider to be normal costs.

The other thing, as mentioned before, a starship is much more complex than a rifle (or even an ME-262). Maybe a better comparison would be the ubiquitous Liberty ship from WW2. Standardization of the process and training the crews to build using assembly line processes dropped the average build time from 230 days to just 42. Now that doesn't include the fitting out process, just time from laying the keel to launch. Ironically the engine selected for the Liberty ship was an obsolete one and chosen specifically because it WAS obsolete and easier to build than more modern ones. And it was built using pre-fab efforts rather than from the ground up.

To your point I'm not saying it couldn't be done. However I'd not be as generous in time or costs savings for building a TL-12 ship at a TL-15 yard simply because its a complex thing being done as a non-standard process. So MAYBE 5-10% cost reductions? But other complications might be time (why a TL-15 yard would bother to build it when they could build standard TL-15 designs and probably make TL-15 profits??) and finding a yard willing and slow enough to bother to do this. Like you said, it's your Traveller game, so whatever rules you prefer to come up with are perfectly acceptable.

 

[Condottiere]

I wouldn't try to understand economics in Traveller.

Three factors to consider are good enough, restricted, and classified.

 

[Sageryne]

I wouldn't try to understand economics in Traveller.

Three factors to consider are good enough, restricted, and classified.

I have to say, that is the most succinct and accurate post on this thread.

 

[swordtart]

There is also comparative advantage and arbitrage to consider. If the TL15 yard can produce jump drives cheaper than the TL11 yard then the TL11 yard is going to have to build its drives to the cost of the TL15 yard or no-one will buy a drive from them. Since there are limits on what TL11 economies can produce economically it is more likely they are just going to import jump drives from the TL15 yard. The minimal extra cost for freight is going to be fractions of percent for ship components. Similarly whilst the TL15 yard could make TL11 jump Drives it can make more money making TL15 components, so it makes sense for it to import any TL11 ones that its customer base requires.

There was a brilliant example in Far Trader how two suppliers with very different output efficiencies could cooperate to the benefit of both by focussing on their sweet spot.

Just because a TL15 yard could make a thing cheaper than a TL11 yard, why would it? If they take a percentage of the sale price , it just reduces their margins.

 

[Condottiere]

Last time we used to have exchange rates, between planetary currencies of differing technological level.

Cost of production is based on overhead, labour and materials used.

The usual variables are labour and overhead.

If ecological damage is a factor, the fact that you don't have to clean after yourself, should make that cheaper.

Then retail accounts for stuff like seller's overheads, transportation, warehousing, staff, marketing, shrinkage, and taxation.

 

[MasterGwydion]

Yes, and that's kind of my point. Trying to build the Jumo engine would be time consuming and nuts when you could get something off the shelf that would work.

The problem is once you swapped out engines you've now changed the aircraft. Lets say for discussion sake you are able to take the existing Jumo engine housing and place a better engine inside of it, so you don't have any external aerodynamic changes. However it's a different size, so you have to make an internal housing to hold it in place. Your control and wiring and fuel line interfaces are now all different and all have to be modified. Will the gauges in the cockpit be compatible? Will the weight distribution require additional tweaks to the aircraft? And you've now got a frankenstein craft.

The shrinking of the footprint of things is inevitable for most items (some things like vents and water/sewer lines remain the same as those items would not change even though the size of your life support system might). That free's up space, but it should also start to cause other problems that you have to accommodate and you start losing certain cost advantages (and some actually can go up). Say you are installing a modern server that required optical cabling as the brains of your 1979 house. Unless you update all the other interfaces you can't make optical connections work over a co-ax or even token-ring network. And if you are able to build interfaces to make it work you then are limited to the speed of your network while a lot of capacity remains unusable on your modern server.

I think the book probably doesn't take into account of tech changes and all the little things that go into making the big thing. Unless your workforce is knowledgeable and has the tools and experience, they should actually require more effort to do the work. This would hold true up or down the TL scale until they gained the requisite knowledge and experience.

The argument would be different if say you took out a 1960s battery and replaced it one from 1980. Assuming your voltages remained the same then your more modern battery would be lighter and last longer. But that's a relatively simple thing. Building a very complex thing like a starship isn't a fair comparison.

Maybe we should look at it like this.

Building a Model T Ford the year it was built (1908) using the best TL available manufacturing process. That is the original TL-12 ship in the OP.

Now build a modern factory to turn out those exact same Model Ts. They are way cheaper to make currently (in 2025) if We used a brand new modern factory to build original Model Ts. This is the TL-15 ship with the exact same stats as the TL-12 ship.

The other option is to build a car that looks like a Model T, but has been completely redesigned to be built with 2025 technologies using the original capabilities of the Model T to determine which modern best fit with that design plan. This would not be cheaper, but the components would almost all be smaller.

I believe this to be the point of the OP. I could be wrong though.

 

[swordtart]

Maybe we should look at it like this.

Building a Model T Ford the year it was built (1908) using the best TL available manufacturing process. That is the original TL-12 ship in the OP.

Now build a modern factory to turn out those exact same Model Ts. They are way cheaper to make currently (in 2025) if We used a brand new modern factory to build original Model Ts.

I believe this to be the point of the OP. I could be wrong though.

The question is would the original Model T factory be able to sell them in the modern market place for more than the modern factory can.

The question was phrased as surely a TL11 ship should be cheaper to buy from a TL15 shipyard. The question is actually cheaper than what? Not cheaper than a TL11 shipyard can sell the same ship for. No-one would buy it at the TL11 price if you could buy the same one from the TL15 yard for less.

It is the higher TL manufacturer that sets the price everyone else has to chase.

There is actually a real modern analogy to this. Morris minors used to be made in the UK and at the time were no less outdated than any other production car. They were exported to India and were very popular. When they fell from favour in Europe the equipment was sold to Indian factories so that they could continue to support their market which was still strong. Current Morris Minor enthusiasts in the UK source their spares from Indian factories for less than modern part manufacturers charge for equivalent parts. Many this drive this price difference but the lack of technology base in some parts of India drives costs down not up.

The comparison with historic things is flawed because it does not recognise that the historic version and the current version need to be selling in the same modern market place. Some people may buy at a premium for "hand-made" or niche market but that is not the same as made for mass markets using obsolete manufacturing equipment. The historic factory was not using obsolete equipment it was using contemporary stuff but if it were manufacturing in the modern era it would be either using modern equipment or to force the TL analogy it would be buying in obsolete manufacturing equipment (at significantly lower cost of ownership). With lower overheads it can lower its price to match that of the Higher tech factory.

The flawed assumption is that TL11 shipyard is making it for the "right price" and that includes all it's inefficiencies. In fact the price is what the market will bear regardless who makes it.