[Spaceships] Are spaceships unrealistically cheap?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by vicky_molokh

Tell me more.

Uh, there is such a laundry list there...

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

As I look at individual components I see more things that look arbitrarily expensive than too cheap. Higher tech always costs more than lower tech and even superscience costs more than hard science. Nothing ever really lowers costs. That in particular looks odd to me. It's probably more of a concern about regular progressions than anything else.

Remember (A) higher TLs are richer than lower TLs - if the price doesn't go up by a factor of the 6th root of 10 per TL it's getting cheaper relative to income and wealth, and (B) higher TL improves many spaceship systems' performance at no added cost.