[Spaceships] Are spaceships unrealistically cheap?

[Michael Thayne]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Can you actually match the performance with a cheaper spaceship?

Because if you can't, the case that there's a problem is...fuzzy.

For missiles, the match isn't perfect (in part because there's no "warhead" or "self-destruct" system available for spacecraft), but if you look at the performance statistics on Spaceships 3 p. 17, those statistics are clearly matchable withe the rules for building spaceships, though 32cm+ missiles (which have double the delta-V) will need a multi-stage design in order to replicate. Basically you're looking at two or three engines, and everything else fuel.

For fighters, I won't do a full build, but it only takes one jet engine to get 1G of acceleration, and the heavier fighters in Pyramid #3/53 are only ~30 tons (SM+5 on the Spaceships scale). An SM+5 jet engine is $300K, compared to the multi-million dollar price tag for the fighters in Pyramid. Very few systems in Spaceships cost more than that at SM+5, so you're not going to get a price tag above $6M, the price of the 10-ton "Fishbed" fighter. So Spaceships understates the price by at least a factor of three.

As for David Johnston2's point, I suspect that's the correct IRL explanation, but it's undesirable for groups who would rather have internal consistency than easy access to spaceships for PCs.