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Is there really no way to do a chart for most common combinations of things for stuff like ships?
And if it's because ships are so customizable, what about having "preset" ships you can add and remove stuff from, adjusting the price. Might it be easier?
*scratches head*
Sorry, you got me thinking about this. App free would be best, IMO if you really want purity in tabletop gaming.
A phone app or a website they can get to from their phone if you must have one, IMO.
Real programmers use butterflies
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I agree, app free will be best!
Thing is.. designing spaceship does not happen very often...
Thing is.. as the GM you prepare a few standard ship in advance that you reuse a lot. And a few special ship, prepared in advance...
Other thing... miniaturization and cost reduction, which make all this calculation complicated have a big impact worth having....
In practice... mmm... I could have final price for each tech level already calculated.. since tech level will not change much if at all across whole campaign... but it's good to know for tech level for alien civ ship design... mmm.... you are giving me an idea....
plus I have 210 tech and typing them in C# right now is tiresome.....
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Always happy to be a muse.
Hell, I'll take mildly amusing. 
Real programmers use butterflies
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Actually, scratch that, I am going to have a desktop app to do my galaxy map! (and some other graphic element... to be printed on paper! it's not a video game!  )
I can as well do the spaceship design in it! 
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Beware! I worked for a long time on a computer assistance program for a complex tabletop pen and paper game (Star Fleet Battles). I never finished it because I started on a starship design program to create definition files and SSDs for the game. After five years I am still working on the ship design program!
BTW, I started on the game assistance program in 1991 - written in Rexx on a mainframe I was given permission to use at off-peak times. A friend designed an SGML program that printed hex maps on green stripy paper - and then on the mainframe laser printer - beautiful!
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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SGML wow. There's a blast from the past.
Real programmers use butterflies
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The past...
...I sometimes wish I was back there again. I was working in Germany at the time and life (outside work itself) consisted mostly of beer, pretzels and skiing - not necessarily in that order. I remember lots of Goulash Soup being involved as well.
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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Actually I already have a proto drawing program with beautiful UI! 
But it kind of went nowhere after I spent 6 month stuck on math problem trying to use a novel vector graphic editing method of mine! 
Regardless you can already do tiles, and stuff. I have a version friendly serializer that let me update my file format on a whim... just need to add text to my hex tiles now.. and add a planet editor (very simple line with planet icon floating and a temperature line!)
But good warning regardless, it's a big endeavor!
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Beware of scope creep. As I was working on adding a feature I would think of a refinement of that feature ...and then another minor feature ...and then another feature inspired by that feature ...ad infinitum if you're not careful! 
- I would love to change the world, but they won’t give me the source code.
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No worries, it's a hobby project!
I am the only user, developer, PM, tester, etc...
And yes, this thing has been dragging for easily 2 years now.. 
But it looks good and has some functionality already! 
But now I am, indeed, pushing myself to minimum feature and developement, it's almost there, and I really want to have a simple Hex map.. so I am going to put in the work to do just that...
And whatever free (or even 2 paid one) products I found on the internet are such a chore to use.... So I do need my map editor! Even unfinished as it is, it is very quick and easy to edit stuff! That's one of it's core design feature!
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Hosting in the cloud comes to mind.
I know Azure has a free tier for web apps (though they are limited to an hour a day compute time and you can't have a custom domain).
The B1 tier is the next cheapest option without the compute constraint and a custom domain for ~€11 a month.
At least you won't need your own server, etc. and you can host your own web app relatively cheap and easy.
As for reading the Excel data, there are some libraries available that can do that without actually needing Excel.
Excel uses some open XML format under the hood, I believe, so that's what to libraries do, create XML.
GitHub - EPPlusSoftware/EPPlus: EPPlus 5-Excel spreadsheets for .NET[^] comes to mind.
For your use case it's probably free (since you're not using it commercially), but older versions remain free for all to use.
Good luck 
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thanks!
I wonder if I could use the free tier.. all I need is one static single page!
(ok, it's a spa with lots of client side computation, but 0 other server queries...)
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WordPress and PHP.
(Marc ducks and runs for cover)
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Flagged for inappropriate!
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PHP! 
But I guess if I was conversant in PhP might not have been such a bad idea! ^^
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So you're fiddling around with tabular multidimensional data.
But you "don't want no database and sh*t". 
That's exactly where I would start.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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well... what's the point of making a single page static web page, and then require a database!
I am making a "database of sort" a C# file with all the techs.. turns out I might do desktop app after all (for designing galaxy map, half way there) can as well include the spaceship, me think...
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Depends on the amount of data of course, I was under the impression that you wanted to design more than one spaceship, but now I see it's singular.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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yea, the space ship are design and forget.. (or, ideally, print on paper or word document)
they can also be done in just a few click... but calculating the current payload and whether or not one can have a 6th device, is the tricky bit (up top 7 devices and 7 weapons)
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Are the devices and weapons and all other dimensions predefined?
Then a database might make sense after all.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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yes, they are all predefined. there is hardly any room to customize it any more, and certainly not on the fly.
Although one can argue.. it only goes to tech level 21! what happen to tech level 22 civilizations and above?! Are they doomed to transcend to another trans dimensional parallel universe and never be seen again?!
One can only guess at this stage....
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They invent time travel, but miscalculate and transcend to another universe, and have to start over from the beginning.
Wrong is evil and must be defeated. - Jeff Ello
Never stop dreaming - Freddie Kruger
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A great mystery solved!
My pet theory was indeed that the Orions traveled to the astral plane and became the gods of the other fantasy world I adventure into!
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I strongly suggest that you do not look for answers here as much as in the plethora of game dev forums on the internet, i.e. Reddit Game dev and indie game dev, and other game dev forums. I currently subscribe to most of the Reddit game dev forums, and they are extremely informative and helpful.
these are game devs, and they can better answer your questions, IMHO.
Cheers.
Here is one for starters: gamedev[^]
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