I have put out about 3 bil for several ships to be developed over my time here. It averages about 500-750 mil. Depends on a lot of different variables, and finding someone qualified and willing to do it. The other thing is getting someone who has already had work accepted by the mod. For ships the dev team wants the total package done, which means model, textures, hardpointing, custom hitbox, as well as ingame testing. It is a complex process, and the people who can see it through from start to finish are few and far between. Lastly, it requires someone shepherding the project through, talking to the proper devs and whatnot to make sure the project makes it to completion, not an easy task either.
Yeah I can understand what you mean by a very difficult process.
Samura is and has been looking for a ship that would suit a few purposes that we have in mind.
If any ship designers are open to more work, it would be great to hear from you.
Until then I shall continue to sort through the list of ships to find one that matches our needs.
In general ships get developed for free.
Jinx for instance, hasn't received any credits for his entire Zoner line.
Doom also has developed silly numbers of quality ships and not received moneys for them.
It mainly depends on the ship modellers want to do it. If they aren't that interested, some credits make up for that gap in interest.
To answer your question simply:
It can be 0 to 1 billion, as the Hessian thing has shown.
It depends mainly on the developers interest in the project and their current time constraints.
I think that the best reward is not the money you ll get for a model, but to see people like your work, and just enjoy of that.
As a beginner modeller i also think that the first model which got approved is a very important "reward" too.
(I hope there are not many mistakes in my post -_-)
it is my opinion that someone that needs to be payed to do the job ... isn t qualified to do it in the end. someone should do it of his own free will - thats the best way to get good results. ( doesn t apply to real life work - only applies to voluntary modding work )
that doesn t mean that you don t get good work when you offer to pay for it. - but it means that a modeller only getting to work for money will most likely not get to a satisfying result - or less likely than a modeller that has an idea he wants to realize out of his own free will. - however... being payed means that one might not abandon a project prematurely - but it can also mean that you "force" a result, cause you get payed, no matter what.
either way - the best results are achieved when a modeller WANTS to make a ship and has a profound knowledge of the lore - or at least that kind of lore he wants to show.