Catwalk Wrote:I'd like to say thanks a bunch too. I'm a spreadsheet enthusiast too, and I'm very impressed with your work.
One thing I've always been wondering is, what are the exact formulas for how miniaturization and power works? If you could put it in simple terms, I'd be grateful 
Miniaturisation
cost reduces by 50% per 10 levels of technology above the minimum required level
size reduces by 25% per 10 levels except weapon size which reduces by 50% per 10 levels
This translates to the equations:
For 50% reduction: power(0.50, (tl - itl)/10 )
For 25% reduction: power(0.75, (tl - itl)/10 )
....where itl = item tech level and tl = current tech level in field of that item
Note there is a maximum of 50 levels of reduction and a minimum of 0 levels (if tech tier jumped).
The game does not do 'complex' power calculations but uses an inbuilt table of approximate values (two decimal places) as quoted in strat guide (see my spreadsheet cells B176:D226). In my spreadsheet you will see examples of using the power function and of using lookup to this table. The results are very close but the table lookup should better match game.
Power
Each engine generates 10 units of power times its warp rating
Example
So using cells in my V7 spreadsheet example - tech levels 8,13,4,14,12,5 Medium ship with Warp 2 and 3 x HyperVx2:
Base data is from game manual, game supplement, strat guide or dump of exe file
Hyper-V is level 4 compared with weapon tech level 5 so 1 level reduction or 0.93 (50% scale for cost & weapon size)
Warp 2 is tech level 6 compared with propulsion tech level 12 so 6 levels reduction or 0.66 for cost, 0.84 for size
Z145, AB145 is base cost/size of Hyper-Vx2 of 9, 70, M145 is power requirment of 20
N145, P145 is reduced cost/size of one Hyper-Vx2 of 8.37, 65 (using 0.93 reduction)
Although each item line will show reduced cost/size of selected engine based on item's power requirements I do not use these values. Experimentation suggested it was important to add the power requirements of all items together first.
K3:O11 is base engine data including cost/size 4, 18 for warp 2, V3:Y11 is base maneuver power values 15 for medium maneuver 1
P13, Q13 is reduced cost/size of one of selected engine of 2.64, 15 (using 0.66, 0.84 reductions)
Medium ship has base cost of 36
Hyper-Vx2 cost/size in F19, H19 does lookup of reduced value times count of 3 so 25.11, 195
Power requirements in E18, E19 are lookup of maneuver and weapon (* count) so 15, 60 with total in E26 of 75
Engine cost/size in G27, I27 is total power/engine power (75/20=3.7 engines) times reduced cost/size so 9.77, 55
Engine cost/size is divided amongst items G18,G19 I18,I19 just to show impact of each item individually
The trick is to know when to round off results. Either debug the code (see Kyrub) or experiment until you get results to match. Usually there are two decimal places but some values are apparently rounded early, some later. The engine count to one decimal place is just a guess which fit the examples I tried!
Anything else, let me know.
