Could you explain FTL drive costs again? You do remember that the amount of eezo and power applied to it increase exponentially with increase of affected mass and maximum speed? We need at least two points (i.e., say "a frigate weights X1 and its drive core costs Y1" and "a dreadnought weights X2 and its drive costs Y2") to calc the cost for a city ship.
The problem is that we have very little data on FTL cores. Here are the facts as we know them:
The Normandy SR-1's core was double the size of a normal core and cost 120 billion (raw eezo price only). In other use size has meant mass (though consistency and bioware.. yeah). Logically a normal core would cost 60b. Its worth noting that he larger core only doubled the use time of the core, but did not increase the top FTL speed as far as we know. The Normandy SR-1 was around 135m long. The top speed of the Normand was maybe around 15LY/day (effective over an unknown time period) and its endurance close to 100 hours.
A fighter core costs ~10 million credits for the full mechanism. Fighters range from ~6-12m depending on which one your talking about, who you ask and how they feel about things in game material supports the ~6m figure from what I can tell. Top speed unknown but FTL capable, probably in the 5-15LY/day range. The thrusters are far weaker, but the mass in much lower. Ideally this figure would give use the second point but the performance is unknown...
The Normandy SR-2 has double the mass ("size") of the SR-1 but has a mass effect core three times the size (making the cost 360 billion credits!). However the effects of this are unknown. The only known change in flight ability between the SR-1 and SR-2 is that the SR-2 can't land on planet with to many gees. The top speed of the SR-2 is still most likely ~15LY/day (effective over an unknown time period). The Normandy SR-2 is 170m long according to one of the graphics artists that worked on it. (This figure along with the mass change is used to calculate the size of the SR-1)
I believe that a suitably clever (and bored) person could turn these into a helpful analysis. Maybe taking the mass of RL fighter craft (the have the right composition as I believe they tend to use titanium) and size scaling for a mass estimate (alternatively submarines, though they are iron based). Of course the armor used is most likely tungsten or carbon so that's something to think on I'd also guess that the SR-2 has about the same performance as the SR-1 if only for the sake saying something useful. That's the real problem getting two cores for two different mass that do the same thing. The SR-1 and SR-2 are the most reasonable comparison and even then I think the SR-2 might be "better".
In addition the "useful" range of craft is below 1km for the most part. Reapers push that up to 2km, but they don't have am economy to really worry about do they? You could do analysis from that perspective as well. The exponential curve is mostly flat until 1km ships (whatever their mass averages out to) turn up heavily at 2km, and then gets insanely steep after that.
I have largely been handwaving the exact costs because of the poor level of data available. If anyone has better data or a useful informative analysis I'd be interested.
Hey, is there a hard limit on how much power you can pump into a chunk of element zero before you need to add more of it or is it just a practicality issue?
The answer to you question is probably yes. If you mean what I think you mean.
Begin nerdy tangent! Okay so to clarify. Power=energy/second, I'm going to assume you mean that. Eezo runs on current (charge per second=amps). After an amount of time the charge will build up to high and then zap! However the voltage (energy/charge=volts) you an put into eezo at any one moment is limited use the wrong voltage (or use impure eezo) and it goes boom! (Or so says CDN-01/19/2011). Current is directly dependent on the Voltage and Resistance (assuming I get to be lazy and use Ohm's law, which is debatable). Power is equal to volts times amps. Assuming constant resistance (or at least a limited range), then yes the amount of power you can pump into eezo at any given moment is fixed as the formulas can be simplified as Power=(Volts^2)/R.
Of course as usual we have no clue about any actual numbers and a few of the relationships are missing but there you go. After a point you need to alter the amount of voltage you can use and the most likely easiest way to do that is add more eezo.
Also
@Hoyr how much do those Arc Reactor core replacements cost? 50% of the value of the Reactor? If so, we can sell maintenance contracts for those 150 GW Arc Reactors: earn 50,000 credits per quarter for a cost of 20,000 credits and 0.125 Production for each Arc Reactor we sell a contract for.
Maybe a few thousand credits ever few years for a 5GW depending on use? You literally take a piece (or pieces) of (suitably pure) palladium cut to the right size and shove it/them in the socket after taking the old one out. The palladium is a standard galactic resource.
I'm not sure you'd real see much need for maintenance contracts, you could just call up nearly any major palladium mining company/distributor and say "hey I need a bit of palladium in such and such a size at X purity" then put the darn thing in. You'd want to handle the spent core safely, which maybe an issue. I'd figure most large firms could do that on their own. You might be able to do something for smaller businesses/individuals, having "the arc-reactor guy" drop by and take care of that would help a lot. Of course the need for that in the market might cause others top pop up and fulfill the need.
Also, here's a blank template I've developed for spaceship design in case we need it (though odds are this game already has something like this and I'm wasting my time):
Cool thanks. Don't think we have anything like that yet. Ships became a thing just last update really.
@Hoyr can tell us what a standard warranty is and we can add 10 years or so too it.
Depends on who your buying from and what. An implant with proper maintenance should last for the lifetime of its user. Especially as replacement is not usually an option (or at least not an easy one). Most warranty/care plans last for decades or have the option to buy extensions or something. Asari ones often for centuries. Of course you usually have to pay for the better warranties or extensions etc.
Amps on the other hand are much shorter, depending on who you buy from. Years to a couple of decades depending usually. Though as usual the Asari tend toward very long times indeed.
