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06-09-2014, 12:02 PM | #11 | |
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
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A copy of Solidworks (good 3d modeling program) goes for about $5k a license, frex. But that's because about 1/3 of mechanical engineering companiea are buying multiple copies. |
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06-09-2014, 01:38 PM | #12 | |
Join Date: Sep 2007
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
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Salary for a programmer in the US is about $100k (and up), or about $2k per week. Maybe $50k and up in China. Considering the loaded labor rate (benefits, tools and equipment, overhead like rent and utilities, support staff, etc), that $5k buys you about two weeks of work. To pick a randomly Googled example of bespoke software, the North Carolina DMV system cost $8 million to develop over 3 years. And while they no doubt have a lot of details to deal with, it's really just a database at heart, with customizations as needed to interface to their other systems. If you think of the DMV as the customer, it's $8M per copy. If you think of the 128 DMV stations across the state as the users, it's $62.5K per copy. If you think of the drivers in the state as customers -- not that they have a copy of the software or can use it directly, so they're hardly "users" -- it's about $1.30 each. The cost to develop software is high. The marginal cost to make another copy is very small. (Not usually the cost of the media, as a lot of people assume, because there's still sales and distribution and so on. But much smaller than the development cost.) So, software gets cheap when you can amortize that development cost across a larger number of users. If you want to hire a team of super-programmers to whip up the best possible program just for you, it's going to cost millions, and years, unless it's a very simple program. |
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06-09-2014, 01:41 PM | #13 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
Yup: there are man-centuries of work in something like that. Something of the same order as there are in Word, or Excel, but a lot fewer people need or buy it. Producing software of that scale is more than just design and programming: the testing is a large operation, as is the support, so it's kind of hard to put accurate numbers on the amount of work involved.
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06-09-2014, 02:22 PM | #14 |
Join Date: Jun 2006
Location: Portsmouth, VA, USA
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
VERY cool stuff, guys. Thank you. :-)
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06-09-2014, 02:36 PM | #15 |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
Two things that have possibly been overlooked regarding the software discussion:
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06-09-2014, 02:44 PM | #16 |
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
"Usually not for sale" says to me "use points, not cash to represent.". YMMV.
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06-09-2014, 03:23 PM | #17 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
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06-09-2014, 03:30 PM | #18 |
"Gimme 18 minutes . . ."
Join Date: Sep 2005
Location: Albuquerque, NM
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
Sometimes. I don't think this is one of those cases.
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06-09-2014, 03:57 PM | #19 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
Well, in GURPS Supers, the idea was that a super might have not merely high-quality equipment, but cutting edge equipment at the very limit of technological capability, as Signature Gear. And for it to be Signature Gear it has to have a price in GURPS $. The 100x multiplier was offered as a nominal amount for that purpose.
Bill Stoddard |
06-09-2014, 04:01 PM | #20 | |
GURPS FAQ Keeper
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Kyïv, Ukraine
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Re: Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)
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Also, remember that there's a best-of-the-best Toolkit x at TL x, then there's likely been a Toolkit (x-1) at TL (x-1). Cutting-edge stuff isn't cutting-edge forever, and a 'best of TL8' (+4) toolset is still very impressive at TL9 too. |
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best for your tl, equipment, quality, signature gear |
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