> How do you price that “objectively” unless you’re given a breakdown of the company R&D expenses, operation costs and margins.

You ballpark how long it would take you to build something similar? You don’t need any breakdown for that, just a marginally competent engineer on staff.

Software developers:

> we can't do estimates.

Software developers as soon as estimating something would be beneficial for them.

> all you need is one of us on staff, to do estimates.