LT, LTC3, Buildings and Materials

[Fnugus]

Recently it came up in my campaign that someone wanted to construct buildings, and to save money, transport and construct it themselves, mostly.

In LTC3, there is a nice formula (in chapter 6) for finding a buildings cost and weight, and a table saying that for wooden structures, 20% is construction labor, and the rest is materials. Now, adding this together with the cost for wood on the materials table in chapter 5, these numbers really don't add up.

Example:
A house, 60 ft long, 18 ft wide, 7 ft. tall, 2'' planks. We settle for a partition factor of 0,4. This gives us a cost of 25,038 (60 x 18 x 7 x 2 x 0,4 x 4,14$) and a weight of 16148 lbs (~8 tons) (60 x 18 x 7 x 2 x 0,4 x 2,67). So, followind this, 20% should be construction labor, around 5008. That leaves 20,030 for materials.

Looking at chapter 5, we see that 2'' planks are $1.45 / lb., which gives us a material cost of 23414 ($1.45 x 16148 lbs), which is significantly more than the 80% it should be.

Any suggestions as to how I should use and/or tweak these numbers to arrive at a fair and reasonable solution for my players?

[Diomedes]

Perhaps the wood for the house isn't planks, or if it is, the builders cut them themselves on site.

[Dunadin777]

Originally Posted by Fnugus

Example:
A house, 60 ft long, 18 ft wide, 7 ft. tall, 2'' planks. We settle for a partition factor of 0,4. This gives us a cost of 25,038 (60 x 18 x 7 x 2 x 0,4 x 4,14$) and a weight of 16148 lbs (~8 tons) (60 x 18 x 7 x 2 x 0,4 x 2,67). So, followind this, 20% should be construction labor, around 5008. That leaves 20,030 for materials.

Looking at chapter 5, we see that 2'' planks are $1.45 / lb., which gives us a material cost of 23414 ($1.45 x 16148 lbs), which is significantly more than the 80% it should be.

Any suggestions as to how I should use and/or tweak these numbers to arrive at a fair and reasonable solution for my players?

Looking at your example, I'd eyeball it to say that the 20% labor cost includes some of the woodworking cost of cutting the lumber to size, so that ~$3,000 difference is (maybe) the result of counting that twice. I'd go with the lower set of numbers if they were just financing the construction project, but if they were actively taking part in the construction as well I'd lean towards the higher estimate--to show that they aren't as efficient as well-financed professionals.

Another thing you might consider: I never use the exact figure from the books for prices in a low-tech setting. I make a roll on behalf of the vendor/workers that looks similar to a reaction roll and use that to adjust prices up or down by several percent. That way the prices always feel arbitrary and subject to local, obscure factors that would define societies still steeped in barter economies.

[Fnugus]

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

Looking at your example, I'd eyeball it to say that the 20% labor cost includes some of the woodworking cost of cutting the lumber to size, so that ~$3,000 difference is (maybe) the result of counting that twice.

Well the book specifically says to look at the table to find the % of total cost and labor that is devoted to construction labor.

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

I'd go with the lower set of numbers if they were just financing the construction project, but if they were actively taking part in the construction as well I'd lean towards the higher estimate--to show that they aren't as efficient as well-financed professionals.

One of them are, in fact, kind of professional.

Originally Posted by Dunadin777

Another thing you might consider: I never use the exact figure from the books for prices in a low-tech setting. I make a roll on behalf of the vendor/workers that looks similar to a reaction roll and use that to adjust prices up or down by several percent. That way the prices always feel arbitrary and subject to local, obscure factors that would define societies still steeped in barter economies.

The figures in the book assumes next to no expenses other than the construction and production of materials itself. Most factors I can think would only drive the prices up, but this is not the issue. The problem is that the two methods for approaching cost yields quite different results, so it's not the scaling that gets problematic.

Besides, I like numbers, and I like writing programs that utilize these numbers, but when they don't add up, I get stuck (well, most of the time I wing it or run some kind of math analysis on the numbers, but it's not always enough).