I'd say Moderate for Hydrogen-Oxygen SLOTV (my guess is they're like space cars), High for a HO-powered LLOTV or Metallic Hydrogen SLOTV and expensive for a MH-LLOTV, but that's all feels like low-balling. I would really expect HO-LOTVs to be High, and MH-LOTVs to at least be Expensive. Actual ships are probably going to be shades of Expensive with minimum credit amounts, unless there's a "Colossally" Expensive and "The Player Group Needs To Form A Corporation To Offset The Potential Loss" Expensive level I didn't see anywhere.

JackOfShadows wrote:

Funny thing is, Building a ship shouldn't be that expensive. A few construction hives and an iron core asteroid and you can extrude one with a little time. The real kicker is fueling the thing after you build it. I would pretty much say spaceships are a dime a dozen given the nature of the setting. The real cost is in operating expenses. JoS.

Actually, I think it's the production sizes that make spaceships daunting to produce. You need the resources, the fabbers, and a crew capable of working in zero G who can assemble the ship parts you nano-fabricate. It probably can result in a very investment-heavy endeavor. Plus, there are many issues inherent in ships. Not just in fuel, but other materials. You need to build an entire nuclear or fusion reactor to power most of the ship's systems, which may require a lot of radioactive material. You need semi-conductive materials with which to produce the computer systems. You'll especially need insulating materials. All around, it's far more difficult to create than simply a big hunk of iron formed into a ship.

nick012000 wrote:

Truth be told, I doubt you'd need to assemble anything. You just extrude it from the construction surface one layer of molecules at a time.

Nano-fabricators, according to the description, seem to work as an enclosure. Even if it didn't (such as if you were using a hive and a protean swarm coded with the ship's blueprints), the construction surface would need to consist of the right mixture of metals, carbons, radioactives, silicates and other materials to make such a style of construction even remotely possible. It's one thing to ensure this mixture when producing something small, but a far more difficult thing to pull off when you're trying to build an entire ship. Also remember that nano-swarms (at least human-built ones) have a certain range of effectiveness (they must stay near their swarm so they can return for a recharge. They may not be able to traverse an area large enough to construct the entire ship, and it may either require you to move the hive about or have multiple hives. The dry docks where they likely build ships are probably massive nanofabrication systems that are heavily restrictive and guarded. It probably has a multitude of nanite ejectors throughout it's internals, and likely even has operating arms with hives on the end, which can move towards areas that the other hives cannot reach to build components out of their range. Scum barges and other popular outer system ships are probably assembled by zero-g-talented anarchists as parts come out of the fabber.

Hmmm, they are talking about BIG facilitys, and when they say big i actually think more about Dreadnoughts, Deep-Space Miners (who need to sustain themselves for some time and carry an reasonable amount of ore) and Colony Ships. So yes, the hypercorps (and maybe the Jovian Junta) are the only ones with big-ass ships but what about a small frigate or such.