[What's in a Lair?] Confused about rules for bases

[Joe]

So I've just been playing around the advanced rules for Bases (see Christopher R. Rice's article in Pyramid #3/86: Organizations), and I've encountered a problem: my small apartment in a poor area of town seems to cost 126 million dollars to build! I'm almost certainly just having a brain cramp and missing something really obvious - but I'd really appreciate it if someone could point out what that missing thing is.

Let's say I want to use these rules to create a totally mundane, unexciting base for my vigilante crimefighter hero. The base is just an apartment in a not-so-great area of town, appropriate to a PC at Status -1. For simplicity, the apartment has no special features whatsoever.

How much does it cost to create?

The formula is on p 6 of the article:

Originally Posted by What's In A Lair, p.6

To determine its creation cost, read the base’s Size level as Status on the Cost of Living Table (p. B265) and use the equivalent “Cost of Living” value to get the Size Cost. Total Creation Cost = (Size Cost) x (Average Starting Wealth for TL x 5) x [1 + (Total CF x 0.05)].

As I read the rules, the appropriate numbers are as follows. A small Status-1 apartment is Size 1, which means that the "size cost" is $1500. The average starting wealth at TL 8 is $20,000. The CF is 1, since nothing has been added.

Plugging these numbers into the formula, I get:
(1500) x (20,000x5) x [1+(1x0.05)] = $126,000,000!!

Obviously that can't be right - a Status-1 apartment doesn't cost 126 million bucks to build. I'm certain my brain is just malfunctioning, and I'm missing something really, really obvious here. Can someone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

Thanks in advance!

[Donny Brook]

I get 157,500,000 from your equation.

I don't have the book, but are you sure you don't divide by five instead of multiply? That gives a more plausible 6,300,000.

Or maybe it should be 1-0.05. That would make 142,500,000.

Maybe you misread the size. If it's -1 then it works out to just 31,500,000.

(P.S., IIRC, the CoL for the +1 Level on the Status table is $1200, not $1500.)

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I get 157,500,000 from your equation.

Right you are! Well, that's one of my brain malfunctions, at least. Thanks! (Obviously, though, this still doesn't solve the main problem - in fact, it makes it worse. A Status-1 apartment shouldn't cost $157 million to build!)

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

I don't have the book, but are you sure you don't divide by five instead of multiply? That gives a more plausible 6,300,000.

The pyramid article definitely says multiply. You're right that dividing helps to lower the cost drastically, and thus seems plausible - but even if you divide, it seems like something is badly off, since it's costing you $6.3 million to build a fairly shabby apartment.

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

(P.S. IIRC, the CoL for the +1 Level on the Status table is $1200, not $1500.)

Right you are! That's another silly error on my part - thanks for pointing it out. My math-fu is evidently weak today.

Still, though, the basic problem remains. Even when I plug this correct value into the formula, I get a $126 million dollar apartment.

[ericthered]

Cost of living is static with TL. For status-1, its 300, not 1500. That won't explain everything though: that still leaves us in the millions.

Looking at what makes sense, the basic 20,000*5 = $100,000 leaves us with a moderate price for a house (gurps bucks are old enough they should probably be doubled or something like that when comparing with modern prices). Which means that the number for status 0 should be 1. so I'd just divide all results from your equations by 600.

That gives me a cost of $52,500 for the apartment. If you want to compare to modern amounts that 105k$. which feels right.

[Joe]

Thanks for your comment, eric!

Originally Posted by ericthered

Cost of living[...] for status-1 is 300, not 1500.

Yes, you're right - but (counter-intuitively) the formula in the article doesn't call for us to use the actual Status of the base. Rather, it says:

Originally Posted by What's In A Lair, p.6

To determine its creation cost, read the base’s Size level as Status on the Cost of Living Table (p. B265) and use the equivalent “Cost of Living” value to get the Size Cost.

That's why I'm using the CoL for Status 1 rather than for Status -1.

How did I determine the apartment's "Size level"? Here's the relevant portion of the rules:

Originally Posted by What's In A Lair, p.4

All bases start out as the size of a small room for free (equivalent to Status -2). Higher levels of Size mean a larger area, based on the best living quarters available for a Status equal to (Size - 2).[....] Thus, if a TL8 base had Size 4, then it would be the size of a large house with grounds – what Status 2 would normally give for Cost of Living.

As I read this passage, a base equivalent to a Status-1 dwelling should be considered Size 1.

Originally Posted by ericthered

That won't explain everything though: that still leaves us in the millions.
Looking at what makes sense, the basic 20,000*5 = $100,000 leaves us with a moderate price for a house (gurps bucks are old enough they should probably be doubled or something like that when comparing with modern prices). Which means that the number for status 0 should be 1. so I'd just divide all results from your equations by 600.

That gives me a cost of $52,500 for the apartment. If you want to compare to modern amounts that 105k$. which feels right.

This is all true - all those values seem kind of reasonable. But if the formula for the cost of any base is just "Avg. Starting Wealthx5", then the rules quickly become junk, no? If that's the case then any base, no matter how big or tricked out, is going to cost the same amount.

Thanks again for your comment!

[Crystalline_Entity]

Your calculation seems ok to me - I've been finding that bases generated with these rules seem ~1,000 times more expensive than I'd expect. The designer's notes make this even more expensive by detaching the size from status and having it based on volume - a large base costs trillions of dollars!

[Crystalline_Entity]

I've just looked at the example (p. 12, The Lofty Heights) and that has a creation cost of ~$29 million. It's size 4 (size cost of $60,000, the Cost of Living for Status 4), TL 8 (average starting wealth is $20,000), so it's impossible for it to have a creation cost of $6,000,000,000, (Size Cost * Average Starting Wealth * 5) unless it has a negative CF (which I doubt it does).

I wish there was some working as to how this example was calculated!

[Imion]

'Size Cost' in the formula to determine creation cost is meant to be 'Size'.

See http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...2&postcount=14 and http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...8&postcount=16.

[Joe]

Originally Posted by Imion

'Size Cost' in the formula to determine creation cost is meant to be 'Size'.

See http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...2&postcount=14 and http://forums.sjgames.com/showpost.p...8&postcount=16.

Ahah! Thanks greatly, Imion. In fact that whole thread is of much interest.

Executive summary: the formula in Pyramid is wrong, and ought to be re-written. The explanatory text around it is also wrong, and ought to be removed.

Here's how Christopher R. Rice is actually performing these calculations:

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

A Status 0 at TL8 home is:

Size Cost: 3 (Status -2 is Size 1, Status-1 is Size 2, Status 0 is Size 3, and so on)
Average Starting Wealth for TL x 5: $100,000
Total CF Modifier: 1 + (Total CF x 0.05)

So the house actually costs 3 x $100,000 x 1 or $300,000.

This means we ought to ignore the whole line about consulting the Cost of Living table to find out what the "size cost" is, and instead just use the "size" value instead.

Doing this for my Status-2 apartment, I get $100,000 - which is actually pretty plausible, despite Ghostdancer's claims that the system was never meant to be used for normal dwellings. So that's a win for the system! (Though the relevant portions of the article really do need to be re-written in order to make any sense).

Thanks for your help, everyone! And if anyone is collecting errata for Pyramid, this definitely ought to qualify.