Ship prices at launch

[Stoutman]

I sure hope they do not sell ships for a lazy 10 hour week! Can you earn enough in the real world to buy a fancy car in 10 weeks? Any space ship is way more complicated, and thus expensive than any typical ground vehicle we use today. I do think smaller ships should be affordable to any player, but they should need to put in a good effort for a while to earn enough to buy it. Time will tell what they do.

The medium and larger ships should take a long time for a single player to earn themselves, but still achievable.

The larger ships such as the Starfarer, Caterpillar, and larger should take years of single player gameplay to earn at 30-40 hours a week. Think how long it would take a single person to make enough money to buy a jumbo jet of any type, new or used.

The largest ships are mostly military and will not be readily available to the average player. They will require military service in SQ42, and probably the right reputation in game. I can see a few of them being decommissioned at times to be sold to the players, but there will never be an Idris dealer where you can go shopping and find that baby blue Idris you have had your eyes on. Does any government let their current ships of any type be sold to individuals? Nope.

The larger ships which take a long long time to earn in game, I can see still being worth money in the real world. There are always gamers who have plenty of cash and are willing to spend it to get what they want. Some people do not have the time to put in many hours of play and would rather spend way less hours working in the real world to pay and save some time. A lot of them have helped fund the game development so far!

 

[sovapid]

One of the devs talked about the economy on spectrum.

https://robertsspaceindustries.com/spectrum/community/SC/forum/4/thread/feedback-economy/1294525

1. Ships come with weapon loadouts when you buy them, so any alternate gun is optional. Since gameplay is not prevented (as everyone has one), we opted for a higher price.
2. Analytics informs us that the average questing player is making around 1,700 aUEC/day, and the average session of those players is 30-40 minutes. We liked the balance of working for about 3 days to upgrade a piece of gear, based on our own experiences playing MMOs and the rate we'd upgrade.

So they are talking about roughly 2,000 UEC an hour and it taking 3 days to upgrade one gun (or some other component) on a ship.

 

[Stoutman]

I have always though the DUR and Aquilla being exploration ships with further range and better scanners than the base models, would be better to just haul cargo with for those very reasons. Haul the same cargo further and with greater ability to notice a threat before they get to you.

 

[Michael]

I sure hope they do not sell ships for a lazy 10 hour week! Can you earn enough in the real world to buy a fancy car in 10 weeks? Any space ship is way more complicated, and thus expensive than any typical ground vehicle we use today. I do think smaller ships should be affordable to any player, but they should need to put in a good effort for a while to earn enough to buy it. Time will tell what they do.

[...]

The larger ships such as the Starfarer, Caterpillar, and larger should take years of single player gameplay to earn at 30-40 hours a week. Think how long it would take a single person to make enough money to buy a jumbo jet of any type, new or used.

[...]

The larger ships which take a long long time to earn in game, I can see still being worth money in the real world. There are always gamers who have plenty of cash and are willing to spend it to get what they want. Some people do not have the time to put in many hours of play and would rather spend way less hours working in the real world to pay and save some time. A lot of them have helped fund the game development so far!

I think 5-10 hours is pretty okay for a small ship. This is still a game.
Also you might forget that you need to calculate setback like getting destroyed, repairs, insurance, crew cost, learning the game mechanic (to actually earn the desired reward), luck ...
Jumbo jets: this is still a game. In most countrys you can't buy military or even weapons at all without meeting high criteria. No one would play wow, witcher 3 or kingdom come deliverance if you had to pass 3 years of sword or archery training. -> its still a game. I like "realism" in games but theres a point where it will become frustrating.

Imho caterpillar should be earnable within ~6 months without bigger setbacks
Starfarer etc. ~1 year
Idris well as mentioned earlier it should be a group effort but lets say 2-3 years for one "casual" player without bigger setbacks.

 

[Zookajoe]

Well, if we figure that an UEC is 1/10th of a cent, (5,000 UEC for 5 dollars), then we can postulate pricing in UEC. I know things are bound to change, but this is the only hard evidence we have.
So, the best you can make on a mining run, at the moment, is 10k. 10kUEC is about $10.00. A Cutty Black costs $100 dollars, it should take about 10 hauls of 10k profit to buy a Cutty Black.
Now, the AVERAGE run for mining at the moment, is around 2k or so, and takes roughly an hour all told. This brings us up to 50 hauls, or 50 hours of gameplay to be able to buy a brand new shiny Cutty Black.

Sounds about right.

 

[sovapid]

The larger ships such as the Starfarer, Caterpillar, and larger should take years of single player gameplay to earn at 30-40 hours a week. Think how long it would take a single person to make enough money to buy a jumbo jet of any type, new or used.

That is too much in my opinion. A full time job for two years to get a Caterpillar? That is so much grind I would agree at that point SC is pay to win.

 

[Blind Owl]

this is still a game. In most countrys you can't buy military or even weapons at all without meeting high criteria. No one would play wow, witcher 3 or kingdom come deliverance if you had to pass 3 years of sword or archery training. -> its still a game. I like "realism" in games but theres a point where it will become frustrating

Concur with this. Strongly.

Imho caterpillar should be earnable within ~6 months without bigger setbacks
Starfarer etc. ~1 year
Idris well as mentioned earlier it should be a group effort but lets say 2-3 years for one "casual" player without bigger setbacks.

I think this is still too long. I think a Cat should take maybe a couple months. Most "end game" ships, like the $350 range, should be doable in 3-4 months.
Cap's should take hella long though.

 

[Will C.]

As someone who will only play on weekends i have put a few dollars into the game to say the least. My goal is to have all the ships i want before launch. When game goes live i will just be grinding in game currency to fund my shennangins. My end goal is to have as much fun as i can over the life of the game. So in the end if it puts a smile on my face then the thousands of dollars to me are worth it.