On Tue, Nov 4, 2014 at 5:18 PM,  <xxxxxx@comcast.net> wrote:

> New hull cost:
>
> 1. Architect's fee based on calculated total
>     cost of hull and installed components.
> 2. Cost of the completed hull.

You are aggregating two distinct and different expenses to arrive at a
package price.

You are calculating cost/ship as (cost per hull) + (architect's fee/#
of ships ordered).

Then you go here:

> If the hull is not built then the cost is the
> architect's fee.

Let me correct that:  If the hull is not built, the cost of the design
work, the architect's fee, still has to be paid.

You still have to pay the architect, even if you don't build the hull,
because designing the ship is a separate cost from building the ship.

Te cost of the new hull is the cost of the new hull, and the cost of
designing that hull is the architect's fee, regardless of how many you
build, zero, one, or many.

(Although if real world experience is any indication, there will be
multiple revisions of the design over the first several iterations, as
things are discovered in production or testing that looked OK in the
3d holographic image but don't work well in real life.)

> When the first hull is completed the cost
> is the architect's fee and the cost of the
> finished hull, not counting the bank payments.

If you order one and only one ship, that would be the aggregate cost
of that ship, yes.

> A second hull is built at the same shipyard using
> the plans with the final cost being that of the hull
> and installed components.

By your initial math, the cost per ship of a multi-ship order is (cost
per hull) + (architect's fee/# of ships ordered).

If you order two, initially, the cost per ship of a multi-ship order
is (cost per hull) + (architect's fee/2).

> I'm guessing that the discount starts with the
> next and future hulls being built at the same
> shipyard.

Real world, that's generally not how it works.  If you want it
designed, with a plan to job out production, you pay for the design
work before the architect releases the design to you.

If you go to a shipyard, and they design something in-house, they
*may* allow you to roll the design cost into the production cost,
particularly if you promise to buy some number of ships.  But that's
expensive, because you'll be making mortgage payments on (cost per
hull) + (architect's fee) rather than just cost/hull.

Which is why you want to pay the fee up front before the build phase
happens, unless you are planning to build enough ships to reduce the
share of the architect's fee per ship to something manageable.  But
that's still a bad financial decisions.

Dan

--

"Any sufficiently advanced parody is indistinguishable from a genuine
kook." -Alan Morgan