I thought the Galactic War was already confirmed -_-

Would Galactic War be moddable? If yes, what would be the possibilities?

Well, I've seen cost breakdowns for large projects featuring mid sized groups. Admittedly not in game design but many costs relate to staff time and will be similar.

Let's say there are 12 full time staff at Uber paid an average of I dunno, $65,000? Sorry if I'm insulting anyone there, I'm not familiar with salaries in the USA.

There are various overheads to employment. Assuming that those costs (healthcare, pension etc.) are fairly similar to the UK, each person will cost maybe $72,000 yearly on average.

As this is a big project on a short time scale and Uber are also supporting SMNC, let's say they'll have to take on 4 more people at similar salaries. Some staff time will be spent supporting SMNC, so we'll put full time staff costs down at $850,000, plus another $120,000 for overtime and expenses.

They also have to pay the narrator and the music composer, maybe some other contract staff to deal with specific issues. That sort of work isn't generally full time but it doesn't come cheap either, so let's put another $130,000 down for those features.

Then there's rent for office space, water, electricity, web hosting. That could easily be $100,000 a year. Those 3 new staff will need good computers, desks, chairs, monitors, software licenses, maybe even more office space, so there goes another $30,000.

So far we're up to $1.23 million.

There are physical rewards for higher pledges. So far Uber are committed to producing approx. 12,000 small miniatures, 4000 tshirts and game boxes, 350 posters and art books, 120 statues, and 3 VIP lunches, which I assume include travel. Also don't forget that the final pledged amount will include international shipping costs, at $15 per person for any physical items.

Approximate production costs for physical rewards? My estimation comes out at $125,000 including USA shipping plus $25,000 international shipping, for a total of $150,000. That's based on current numbers, if more people pledge to get us to $1.8 million, these physical reward costs will increase to ~$200,000.

So... about $1.43 million. Then there will be various licensing costs, advertising (can be very expensive), up front costs for large scale production of game boxes and additional merchandise, shipping everything to stores...

Amazon Payments and Paypal take about 4%, and Kickstarter take 5%, knocking the amount Uber would actually receive from a $1.8 million pledge to around $1.62 million. After tax, that'll look more like $1.35 million.

Also consider that the original ~ 10 month schedule was announced based on the original $900,000 funding goal, with no water, lava, or gas planets, sparse orbital units, no galactic wars, and probably other sacrifices not outlined to us. A more reasonable time scale with these features might be 18 months or more, in which case the $1.35 million or so they'll actually have to work with (if I'm right about pledges being tax deductible) is very, very tight.

The average development cost for top tier games is now estimated to be over $20,000,000, to put in perspective what Uber are trying to achieve.

Sorry for getting technical and speculating on finances, but people do seem curious as to where money might go and this, uninformed and probably inaccurate as it is, might help to clarify a bit what sort of costs can be involved in large projects.

Yeah I'm aware that we're talking about a meta-game, as in each match (skirmish or multiplayer or whatever) affects an overall galactic war positioning. I played TA, Boneyards, Phoenix Worx, GBL.

I'm wondering though, if stretch goals aren't met: are these things that you'd add in anyway further down the road, whether it's via expansions, DLC or just patches?

As I understand it, Kickstarter doesn't handle numbers bigger than 10K, which is why DoubleFine put its pledge levels for the super-rich on its website.