ship cost calculator

[Mogwai_with_Mohawk]

This is my first post: so hello there, nice to meet you all! 

Before I start here is two words about me: I have been following this forum for a while now
and I am a friend of brethren - in real life  - who joined the forum a while ago.

But back to business: I would like to introduce my own ship cost calculator kind like the "Smotherman Formula". I don't really have a name for my creation so I will simply start explaining. And for the sake of simplicity I will try to keep this as brief as possible:


What is it?
An Excel sheet, which allows to enter or choose all the stats a BFG ship has. It automatically calculates the cost of the ship on the run. (Some ships may however still require to manually adjust points, e.g. some Grand cruiser with their diffuse side batteries.) But don't worry: most ships work just find and there are fields to add additional point costs. Please note: it is not very "fancy" because it grew over time and I never really worked on the layout. It should however be pretty much self explaining.


Where did I get the point costs from?
The whole thing took several weekends and was done quite a wile ago: I am not even sure about the first steps, because. But afaik I listed ships & their costs and then started comparing them. In combination with given upgrade costs it was possible to do some reverse engineering. Of course there is also a bit of guess work included. 


What can be calculated with it?
So far it supports the Imperial & Chaos ships only, as these two fleets are the ones brethren and I usually clash with. Space Marines & Orks were in the making - but are on hold at the moment. I even considered Tau for a later version, but those steps depend on the feedback I get. Furthermore I would like to add: only normal ships! Ok, so: no trying to calculate the cost of a ramiles - I have to admit I never even tried to go for those eccentric vessels.


How good is it?
Brethren already used it in the talk about Chaos battleships - Boom! - that's right, it is so good people already use it  !!!

No seriously:

Depending on the ship-type: I always go by the rule +/-5 points abbreviation is normal - simply because of the guess work and rounding errors. +/- 10 points is borderline-ish. Everything beyond that point has some clear point issues, unless there are other reasons to justify the costs.

And yes: that means that several ships (depending on the rule book you are looking at) have point issues! This thread however is only intended to introduce myself and the calculator.

So feel free to download the thing and let me know what you think! 

https://docs.google.com/file/d/0B6RMqQCAwCfPOG1YMDB5X1NIVTA/edit?pli=1

or here:

http://www.file-upload.net/download-7280460/Mogwais-calc.xlsx.html

Btw. I added a screenshot of the sheet to give you a first look at whats coming your way.

P.s. damn my bad: if you are looking at the screenshot keep in mind - I do have some issues with some ships and the lunar class is one of them* - so yes the calcualtion shown in the screenshot does actually differ from the costs in the offical pdfs. For means of advertisment I guess I should have used a ship where the costs match perfectly ....

*
http://www.forum.specialist-arms.com/index.php?topic=5208.0

P.P.s I just heard of the need for a download manager but I could not confirm it right now. Let me know if this is really the case - I don't like them and I surely don't want you to use one!

[horizon]

Hey,
before I comment I am more interested in the calculations you used, not the end result.

[Mogwai_with_Mohawk]

Hey,
 
I am not quite sure what you want to know now exactly, so I will just explain a bit and you let me know when I hit the right spot  .
 
 
Basically I dismantled chaos and imperial ship down to their smallest components. Some examples:

- a hitpoint costs 10 points
- a turret costs 5 points
- boosting the weapon range of a S6 WB for additional 15 cm costs 10 points
- etc.
 
Some of those things are based on given upgrade options available to ships, others on comparing and some on guess work.
 

Examples for comparing:

- Imperial lunar class vs. gothic class -> a S6 WB is equal to a S2 LB
 
Latter of which helps to understand why it took so long and why it was a step-by-step porcess - as not every comparison directly leads to point costs.
 

Finally an examples for guesswork:

- Weapon batteries don't always come in S6, S12 or S18 - which is the typical firepower of a single "weapon slot", as I call them - and rather easy to price. The problem is the price for a e.g. S10 weapon battery. Considering I know the price for a S6 WB and S12 WB I could then only make an educated guess.
 

As I said it was a bit of work but finally I was able to price tag every basic element of these ships. Now what the excel-sheet does is it simply gives you the option to select and set every component & weapon and summarizes the points.
 
A final note: due to the rounding in 5 point steps there is always the chance that the points don't fully fit.

I hope the droids you are looking for ... no wait: the information you seek is hidden somewhere within my text  .