in this game every new item gets more expensive.(i think its a lot more expensive)
i would like to suggest some research to counter act this.
either
1. a research field which makes everything cheaper, maybe 95%|90%|85%|80% price instead of 100%
2. or you could improve old tech with research. - lets say you researched magnetic confinement fusion drive. this allows you now to design previous(obsolete) engines cheaper, this could work with weapons, jumpdrives, firecontrols too.
1. I disagree. Economics is not a simple tech tree that you can climb up. I shall use China vs. America as an example. China is able to produce components cheaply compared to America is more to do with the GDP/c than with their "superior" technology. An engineer in China is able to design a component for a very large fee (although smaller than most American counterparts get). The design is then passed on to the factory line, where a few technicians monitor a large group of day workers who both work for lower wages than anyone in America is willing to work for.
If the average GDP/c in China were to be higher, the workers would demand a pay raise. A high growth rate causes inflation that would increase the basic costs of living; a high GDP/c would increase the wages of the people. It does not matte which one raises first as either one would raise the other (usually). The best manufacturing economy is a state with low inflation and low GDP/c.
America, on the other hand, has a highly educated (by comparison) workforce and has a leading edge in manufacturing and robotic technology. They require fewer workers to produce something, meaning fewer wages to pay and more technical minded employees for more complex job tasks. America would benefit from more technology (such as robotics), but China would not (child labour is very cost effective). While China could outproduce technology that is simple to mass produce, things like cruise missiles and nuclear reactors could not be produced as effectively as they can in the US, Canada or Australia.
2. I am both for and against this idea. The main reason why IRL older technology is considered cheaper is because the concept, design and model is well understood, there are plenty of spare parts available, there are many people who have worked on and maintained said part in it's production lifetime, and there is more than likely a factory somewhere in China spitting out spare parts for you to use. Try finding someone who can repair your Vinyl player and see what I mean.
If you really wanted to try this in game, I would suggest having industries tooled for certain components, like shipyards are for ship classes. If you want to build a component the old way, you can do that too, but you would not get the cost reduction, build reduction and maybe even a repair or maintenance bonus for said component. It should not require that much industry, maybe set aside 20-30 IC for commercial ship engines to give your shipping lines a cost reduction for their ship's engines. IRL, the amount of cost and time reduced is called the experience curve, which is different for every type of component. The lower the percentage, the more information and experience is maintained from one cycle to the next. Note that the absolute limit for the cost reduction and the absolute limit for the time to build are usually different from each other.
NASA QUOTES FOR EXPERIENCE CURVES:
Aerospace: 85% experience curve (15% reduction in cost and time to build per doubling cycle)
Shipbuilding: 80-85% (Assuming a new hull is started right after the first one is finished)
Complex Machine Tools for new product: 75-85% (rough start means greater optimization further down the road)
Raw Materials Extraction: 96% (Mining; would also result in fewer accidents and improved output)
Refining: 93% (7% reduction in cost, time is mostly constant due to time required for refining)
Electronics(old): 90-95% (Robotic operations have mostly been optimized to the limit)
Repetitive Electrical Operations: 75-85% (reduction mostly from labour experience, so cost remains constant while time to complete changes; wages required would decrease)
EDIT: Design bugs, oversights and development skips can also be factored in. A quickly designed engine made during wartime may have a higher fuel usage, risk of explosion or cost associated with it, which can be "retrofitted" to produce a more reliable design. Some WW2 examples include the torpedoes of every nation had never been tested in a realistic manor because of cost. The American's went to war with a torpedo that was tested twice, one of which failed to detonate (IE a success rate that turned out to be 33% in the war).
