Component Development Cost Changes
The current formulae for component development costs have a couple of problems. Firstly, they are not always consistent between different component types. Secondly, because of the linear ratio between build cost and development cost for most components, very large components can be prohibitively expensive to research. The following changes are intended to address this problem.
For Missiles and non-STO Ground Units, the Development Cost has been changed to: SQRT(Cost * 25000)
For the following list of components, the Development Cost has been changed to: SQRT(Cost * 5000)
Active Sensors
Beam Fire Controls
CIWS
Cloaks
EM Sensors
Engines
Fighter Pods Bays
Gauss Cannon
Jump Engines
Lasers
Magazines
Meson Cannon
Microwaves
Missile Fire Controls
Missile Launchers
Particle Beams
Plasma Carronades
Power Plants
Railguns
Shield Generators
STO Ground Units
Thermal Sensors
Turrets
In general, this will mean that components (and STO ground units) with a build cost of 50 will have the same development cost as before, while more expensive components will be cheaper to develop and vice versa. For example, the development cost of a 10BP component will increase from 100 RP to 224 RP while the development cost of a 1000BP component will decrease from 10,000 RP to 2,236 RP.
For missiles, the breakeven point (at which development costs are the same) is a missile cost of 2.5 BP.
For ground units the breakeven point is a cost of 10 BP. For example, the development cost of a minimal armour static HQ with 250,000 capacity will reduce from 5,012 RP to 1,583 RP.