Cheaper than many and in mho better.  Simply because it does things in a much less complicated manner. For instance, symmetry. In many apps with symmetry on, you can only manipulate one side...the un mirrored side. In 3dCoat, you can work on both sides of the symmetry plane and have it be reflected. Another great aspect of this tool is having both projection painting (with lots of control) and cubic mapping which is great for laying base coats.

Have you ever had a tech model, ship, station, gear, what have you, and wish you could subdivide it and still have all the sharp edges like with Silo's edge creasing?  You can import that way in this tool.

This is a very low poly ship part out of DoGa. In 3dC I took it up to 4 million polys after importing with smoothing off. I then exported it at a moderate but healthy 70,000 polys. It can now handle Vue's displacement better.

This ship is a quick study in making distributions for Vue's mats.  In 3dC, I laid a nice dirty gray base coat. Then on the second, third and fourth layer, I placed black rectangles and triangles exactly where I wanted engine fire and ship lights. Then I exported the model with it's new UVs and exported everything else in a Photoshop file. I then saved out the layers as distro maps. I mixed one of Vue's dirty metals with the imported base coat and then applied all the pretty lights and cockpit glass. About ten minutes all together.

The next sample is some other tech mats made with 3dCoat and Vue. I'm trying to take Postcards from the Rim type materials and take them to another level. The random placement of Vue's procedurals is great but to put stuff exactly where you want it is even better.