Until today a destroyer cost less than three corvettes and was worth far more than three corvettes. The biggest ship in the yard was also the best deal in the yard, so every mature empire built the same fleet: destroyers, then more destroyers.
This update puts a price on size.
The ladder
Each warship class now costs ten times the one below it, in each currency.
| Price was | Price now | Hull | Damage / tick | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corvette | 40 metal, 32 credits | 10 metal, 10 credits | 40 | 3.5 |
| Frigate | 45 metal, 36 credits | 100 metal, 100 credits | 100 → 200 | 10 → 17.5 |
| Destroyer | 110 metal, 95 credits | 1,000 metal, 1,000 credits | 400 → 1,000 | 22.5 → 87.5 |
Price goes up ten times a step. Strength goes up five. That gap is the point.
Two thousand resources buys one destroyer or a hundred corvettes, and the corvettes carry four times the hull and four times the guns. A bigger ship is no longer a bargain. What it buys is concentration: one hull to escort instead of a hundred, one target instead of a swarm to chase down, a thousand hit points that do not scatter when the fleet takes fire. Whether that is worth paying for is now your decision.
Speeds and build times have not changed. A destroyer still takes forty ticks on the ways, and corvettes are still the hardest thing in the system to hit.
Parts scale with the hull
A weapon mount adds a percentage of the hull's own damage, so the same mount now does twenty-five times more work on a destroyer than on a corvette. It used to cost the same on both. With hulls now running from 20 to 2,000, a flat price would make a destroyer's mounts pocket change and a corvette's mount half the price of the corvette.
Parts now cost in step with the hull they are fitted to, about a tenth of the hull each:
| Kinetic mount was | Corvette | Frigate | Destroyer | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| First mount | 8 metal, 1 credit | 2 metal | 16 metal, 2 credits | 160 metal, 20 credits |
Every part follows the same rule, and a second copy of the same part still costs 1.75 times the first. Stacking three of anything on a destroyer gets expensive fast. The standard destroyer fit (three kinetic mounts, two shields, an engine) now costs about 3,700 all in, against 291 before.
Freighters and colony ships are unchanged, along with everything you fit to them.
Ships already flying
Ships in service keep their hull and guns. A destroyer you launched last week fights exactly as it did. Anything still in your build queue rolls out on the new numbers, and cancelling a queued ship refunds exactly what you paid for it.
Upkeep follows what a ship is made of
What a ship costs to keep has not gone up. What changed is which pocket it comes out of. Upkeep now leans the same way the ship's build price does. A ship built mostly from metal pays mostly in metal.
That used to work off the parts alone, which ignored the hull, and the hull is most of the price. The commonest casualty was a freighter with one engine: mostly metal to build, billed three quarters in credits. It now pays mostly in metal, like it should.
Capital ships pay their way
The Mega Destroyer and Mobile Foundry were designed to carry heavy standing bills, but the bill was never actually charged. They now cost 12 and 10 a tick to keep. That is a real weight, and the only brake on parking one and forgetting it.
Warp Gates, half price
A Warp Gate now costs 2,500 metal and 3,500 credits, half what it did. At the old price, no empire in the current game had built one.