Estimating 'Best equipment possible at your TL' costs? (For Signature Gear etc.)

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Ghostdancer

Interesting. Could you elaborate please (with examples or anecdotes if you have them). I'm not saying you aren't right, I'd just like more information. :-)

I believe he's saying $5,000 is a couple weeks of programmer time. Not "best program in the world.". And the only way you'd get "best program in the world" down to $5,000 is if you sold it to half the planet. Because presumably it took a bunch of programmers working a lot to build this awesome tool, and that is going to cost a lot.

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.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

I believe he's saying $5,000 is a couple weeks of programmer time. Not "best program in the world.".

Yes. My "that" was referring to the $5k cost. Apologies for the confusion.

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.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

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.

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.

[Christopher R. Rice]

VERY cool stuff, guys. Thank you. :-)

[vicky_molokh]

Two things that have possibly been overlooked regarding the software discussion:

1. I mentioned TL10. The same Complexity of software that costs $1,000 per license/instance/copy at TL10 will cost $100,000 at TL8.
2. Surely we're not talking about prototypes, but rather about rare very good stuff. A hospital is not a prototype thing, but it enjoys the Best For Your TL bonus of +TL/2. A prototype would be something from the next TL. Because an item is TL x when it is available to the masses at TL x, not somewhere in the lab / prototype factory.

[Crakkerjakk]

"Usually not for sale" says to me "use points, not cash to represent.". YMMV.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

"Usually not for sale" says to me "use points, not cash to represent.". YMMV.

Sure. But there are times when you want a nominal cash value for something that wasn't bought with cash.

Bill Stoddard

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Sure. But there are times when you want a nominal cash value for something that wasn't bought with cash.

Bill Stoddard

Sometimes. I don't think this is one of those cases.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Crakkerjakk

Sometimes. I don't think this is one of those cases.

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

[vicky_molokh]

Originally Posted by whswhs

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

Other reasons can include requesting equipment, whose maximum nominal price depends on Rank, or figuring how two favours (one of them being a gift of such equipment) compare.

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.