There are some very simple explanations for why costs stay pretty level
for items... they tend to 8-)
If you think about it, they really aren't. For instance, if you get
5 kl of TL15 Fusion Powerplant, it will generate a lot more power than 5 kl of
TL11 plant, though they cost the same. You can assume that equipment designers
keep increasing sophistication as material costs drop, improving performance
but keeping overall cost about the same. Most equipment is either constant cost
(implying performance rises with TL) or constant cost per wt/volume, which
indicates fixed performance but decreasing size and cost. Much of the same...
As for steel and materials... It's been pointed out that modern steel
isn't that much cheaper in constant-money equivalent than the first mass-
producable bessemer steels. Most materials don't get cheaper after the first
good mass-production techniques are developed. Some cheaper, but not a lot.
They get 'cheaper' to use because overall economic levels go up, so that
there's more money to spend on it, but the 'real' cost stays constant.
Yes, materials will get cheaper, but the most significant impact of this
is when you're talking about right around their introduction. For about one
TL, they're incredibly expensive (before engineers know how to make it),
then as TL rises they quickly level off at some reasonable price. If you
really want to play with materials, just introduce them at double or triple cost
one tech level early... (see: experimental test craft), or 'pushing the limits
of current technology', always a real popular item with the PR people but less
so with most production engineers 8-)
- - -george william herbert
[email removed]