Why the massive increase in cost for TL improvement

[Chas]

Make the drive advantages free , maximum 2 of any one kind. Including the reaction thrust. Seems a chunk but I believe very playable. You have to make the high jump, high maneuver units viable vs. lower technology.

Tone down the disadvantages cost saving for budget to 20%.

 

[AnotherDilbert]

Interesting, and not unreasonable.

Keep the massive penalties for prototypes, tone down Budget components, and get the tech upgrades for free (or a nominal cost, say +10%).

And we have a ready-made system that makes higher tech ships noticeably better.

 

[Condottiere]

One thing a higher tech does have, the capability to build lower tech products cheaper, so even if they do meet lower tech opponents on equal terms, they'll have more of it, all other things being equal.

 

[Chas]

Of itself the mechanic of free advantages doesn't do that much game-wise except limit technology cost bloat. Lower techs will simply apply the same advantages to the components.

To have a better representative effect of increased TL we should also include a further mechanic (which our current list of advantages may not cover)

As many advantages can be applied to a technology as the ship's building TL - the component TL. No more than 2 of any one advantage may be applied.

We may want to keep some cost increase per advantage say 10%, (edit: 5% per my other post, budget is -10%/use) so that there is some recognizable cost difference when building ships though. While saying the high tech shipyard can build low cost components cheaper is correct, we need something in the actual ship to reflect a price difference. What we are trying to do here is prevent the cumulative costs getting out of hand. As long it is incremental then Matt's concept of having a bigger budget, can then be applied.