Not sharing ship blueprint rights

[Eranok]

What if we dont have 'company ship blueprints' but instead 'ask the craftsman to make the ship'?

How about having the blueprint strictly personal? So someone commissions you to make a ship because 'good designs are rare'.

Or maybe you can make an items that includes your blueprint but is consumed after one use, so people start an economy around those.

(i mostly react to the latest video. Spawning offline company ships is good, sharing company blueprints or any other blueprint centric convenience can discourage what i tried to illustrate)

 

[Tumbla]

I could get behind something like that, make blueprints require mats to create so the owner cant create infinite amounts and make infinite money.

 

[dusty]

There should already be a decent market for blueprints, since they're not so easily obtained. Plus, a blueprint requires players to fill it in with materials, so it's not like they're cheap to use.

 

[PopeUrban]

Blueprints are just a matter of convenience fees anyway. Anyone that buys and assembles a blueprint can recreate your design with 100% accuracy as they have all the time in the world to reverse engineer it.

The core mechanics of the game prevent you from having any sort of real trade secrets in regard to ship designs. Unless there's a way to encrypt the chips this is also true of YOLOL code. The point of blueprints isn't preventing replication of the design because starbase's mechanics make that impossible. Blueprints exist to quickly and easily assemble a large number of ships. having limited run copies is pointless.

 

[Tumbla]

Blueprints are just a matter of convenience fees anyway. Anyone that buys and assembles a blueprint can recreate your design with 100% accuracy as they have all the time in the world to reverse engineer it.

The core mechanics of the game prevent you from having any sort of real trade secrets in regard to ship designs. Unless there's a way to encrypt the chips this is also true of YOLOL code. The point of blueprints isn't preventing replication of the design because starbase's mechanics make that impossible. Blueprints exist to quickly and easily assemble a large number of ships. having limited run copies is pointless.

How would they be able to recreate it, make it so you just add materials to the blueprint without actually seeing the design?

 

[PopeUrban]

How would they be able to recreate it, make it so you just add materials to the blueprint without actually seeing the design?

Every ship in the game is made from a collection of parts, and those parts have clearly visible connections once assembled. All someone needs to do to copy any ship design is eyeballs, the building tools, and time.

There are no secrets in ship design unless nobody has a chance to take apart the ship, and everyone can take apart any ship they own.

 

[Amos.37]

Unless there's some sort of anti-plagiarism system and a way for specific players/companies to get a blueprint listed as their own (could be implemented but no official mention of anything like this yet), blueprints are mainly for convenience, as PopeUrban said.

I'm sure some players will still design and sell blueprints, but that would mainly be for roleplay purposes.
I guess a player could make a ship and ensure they only let 1 be built at any time, preventing others from reverse engineering it, but that kind of defeats the purpose of blueprints allowing mass production. This would more be for players who want a unique ship. But as soon as a blueprint is given to anyone else, there's nothing really stopping it from becoming widely available, at least no counter that has been officially mentioned.
Heck, I'm sure there will be salvage companies that specifically devote time to reverse engineering ships they like. Could be a market for this, companies creating copy blueprints and selling them for cheap.

Ship design companies might find some way to advertise a ship design as theirs, and so copy designs are like knock-offs, but there's no reason the copies would actually be any different. Think like a knock-off Rolex, except the knock-off is actually exactly the same as the real thing, just made by someone else.

This leads on to another question, how long do you think it will be before a player tries to sue another for stealing their design?
As dumb as it sounds, I'm sure someone will try.

 

[dusty]

Keep in mind, blueprints can only be obtained at a station with a ship editor, and only for a ship that you are the root owner of - ie, the only one who can take a blueprint of something is the one who built the ship in the first place (and it's assumed that building from a blueprint imbues the ship with the original builder as an attribute). You could, of course, take the ship apart piece by piece and rebuild it, but that's a lot of work for a ship of any significant size.

 

[Amos.37]

Keep in mind, blueprints can only be obtained at a station with a ship editor, and only for a ship that you are the root owner of - ie, the only one who can take a blueprint of something is the one who built the ship in the first place (and it's assumed that building from a blueprint imbues the ship with the original builder as an attribute). You could, of course, take the ship apart piece by piece and rebuild it, but that's a lot of work for a ship of any significant size.

I'm saying that salvage companies might do exactly that, take a ship apart piece by piece, reverse engineering it and then they've got a copy of the blueprint to keep. It would also probably be simpler than it sounds. The only really time consuming part would be copying the wiring and YOLOL systems. The chassis of the ship could likely be reproduced just by a close visual inspection. Still take a while, but not so long that it would be impractical. And for some people, likely faster than designing a ship from scratch.

Where did you get the information on blueprints? Is there a feature video I've just totally missed?
How does sharing blueprints work then? It's been shown they can be shared within a company. I'm assuming there are ways to share them with other players not in your company..?

 

[dusty]

Where did you get the information on blueprints? Is there a feature video I've just totally missed?
How does sharing blueprints work then? It's been shown they can be shared within a company. I'm assuming there are ways to share them with other players not in your company..?

Ooh, I should probably clarify that most of my posts should be taken with a grain of salt. The Discord is super active, and the developers frequently answer questions there; as such, most of my input is just tidbit answers taken and put together piecemeal.

I'm not entirely sure how blueprint transfer works, but I think I remember someone saying they could be a physical item some time in the future.

 

[Eranok]

My point is, if its an item, if would be nice if its a one time use to make a ship, not to learn the BP for yourself

Also, its maybe a good idea to not have 'company blueprints' but rather to 'go see the ship specialists of the company and ask them'. It drives more human interaction

 

[Splashcat]

Blueprints could still be sold, as people may want a certain design you have made, but not yet built/allowed to be captured.

 

[PopeUrban]

My point is, if its an item, if would be nice if its a one time use to make a ship, not to learn the BP for yourself

Also, its maybe a good idea to not have 'company blueprints' but rather to 'go see the ship specialists of the company and ask them'. It drives more human interaction

That completely removes the point of having blueprints. The point of a blueprint is being able to quickly build the ship without being a ship specialist, or have bots build it.

 

[Eranok]

That completely removes the point of having blueprints. The point of a blueprint is being able to quickly build the ship without being a ship specialist, or have bots build it.

People can still use blueprints to remake their old designs. If I want one ship of their design, I gotta interact with them.

It promotes people interactions, people specialization (designers) and it makes you care a lot more about your ship if its a borrowed design.

And if you wanna 'steal' a design, you gotta do it the hard way: understanding it, remaking it, saving it. The price of espionnage

 

[PopeUrban]

People can still use blueprints to remake their old designs. If I want one ship of their design, I gotta interact with them.

It promotes people interactions, people specialization (designers) and it makes you care a lot more about your ship if its a borrowed design.

And if you wanna 'steal' a design, you gotta do it the hard way: understanding it, remaking it, saving it. The price of espionnage

The point of blueprints is to make ship designs a transferrable commodity so you DON'T have to visit the ship's designer every time you want a new one. Your suggestion makes them entirely pointless, and makes working as a ship designer worthless if you're not also manufacturing the ships.

That sounds terrible.

 

[Amos.37]

I kinda get where Eranok is coming from. Make it so that any blueprint you design, you have infinite of, but to give it to another player you sell them a one time use item. But then as a player buying a ship, I might as well buy a premade ship rather than a blueprint.

I'd suggest making it so a purchased blueprint has unlimited use, but can't be transferred again. That way, only the original designer can sell the blueprint.
So original designer can sell as many copies of the blueprint as they want.
Player buying the blueprint can use it as many times as they want, but they can't sell it.

This doesn't stop people from reverse engineering the blueprint, and then being able to sell it, but short of a plagiarism checking system, I'm not sure how you could stop that.
Although, a plagiarism checker with this system only needs to check your 'original' blueprints against your purchased blueprints, rather than all of them.
This could still be worked around, but at least makes it a little more difficult.

Another thought for a plagiarism checker would be an in-game blueprint register for commercially available ships. So if you want to sell a design, you have to get it registered to your name. This checks your design against existing designs and flags any that are the same.
This way, people could still make copies of existing blueprints, but they can't openly sell them (cue black-market interactions).

 

[Verbatos]

what if the blueprints had limited use? You could plug a blueprint into a machine that would print out a ship but might cost more materials/power than just building it by hand. It would make less people steal blueprints, since a faction might use them all up before they get there, and it would work for merchants too, since you can decide to give people only enough blueprints to make a single batch of ships.

 

[PopeUrban]

I kinda get where Eranok is coming from. Make it so that any blueprint you design, you have infinite of, but to give it to another player you sell them a one time use item. But then as a player buying a ship, I might as well buy a premade ship rather than a blueprint.

I'd suggest making it so a purchased blueprint has unlimited use, but can't be transferred again. That way, only the original designer can sell the blueprint.
So original designer can sell as many copies of the blueprint as they want.
Player buying the blueprint can use it as many times as they want, but they can't sell it.

This doesn't stop people from reverse engineering the blueprint, and then being able to sell it, but short of a plagiarism checking system, I'm not sure how you could stop that.
Although, a plagiarism checker with this system only needs to check your 'original' blueprints against your purchased blueprints, rather than all of them.
This could still be worked around, but at least makes it a little more difficult.

Another thought for a plagiarism checker would be an in-game blueprint register for commercially available ships. So if you want to sell a design, you have to get it registered to your name. This checks your design against existing designs and flags any that are the same.
This way, people could still make copies of existing blueprints, but they can't openly sell them (cue black-market interactions).

"Plagarism Checker" is not only a terrible idea, its pretty much a non starter from a design standpoint.

First, the most efficient designs are going to tend to be very similar even without two designers looking at one another's ships.

Secondly how do you even define "Plagarism"? An exact copy of a blueprinted ship? okay, I'll move a bolt.

A similar design? What defines "similar" and by how much? What if I move a bolt? What if I move a beam? At what point do you draw the line between a "Copy" and just plain efficient or smart design? You can't.

Why bother in the first place? Why all this talk of protecting blueprints like they contain secret sauce? The design is right there for your customer to look at with their own eyeballs, and that same customer will HAVE to learn your design ovber the course of the ship's life because they're be responsible for maintainence and installing any upgrades they want to add to it.

Blueprints don't exist so you have have a super special one of a kind design. They exist specifically to ENABLE not PREVENT making copies of that design. If you don't want somebody easily copying your design... don't sell it.

Again you're not selling a secret when you're selling blueprints. You're selling labor. The time it took to design it. People are paying you primarily for convenience. They don't want to reverse engineer a design or make their own. They just want a solid ship they can throw resources at. The few people that do reverse engineer and copy your design put in even more labor than you, and exist to prevent you from getting lazy.

In a game with such a large engineering component it is severely anticompetitive to try and basically invent copyright law, and not only that it is virtually impossible to implement or enforce in any meaningful sense. Its a waste of time that serves only to make the game worse.

Competition for your blueprints shouldn't revolve around a system that prevents competition and encourages you to just sit on designs. It should revolve around constant iteration and innovation of the ship designs.

People shouldn't be forced to buy your design just because you signed a paper that says "OC DO NOT STEAL"

They should want to buy your design because its a better design than theirs, and a better design than the last one they bought from you.

"Limited Use" blueprints assumes there is a way to tell when a blueprint is "used"

There isn't. This isn't EVE where you put a blueprint in a menu and out pops a ship. Blueprints are holo-skeletons that require a tool to run over them in 3d space. To build a factory you'd need to do a ton of engineering probably more complex than half the ships you were going to build with it. I could get unlimited "uses" of a blueprint by simply automating 99% of the building and finishing the last 1% myself.

This entire conversation seems to have a fundamental minsunderstanding of the whole point of blueprints in a building game.

 

[CalenLoki]

@PopeUrban nicely summarised.

But

The last part about limited uses is not true.
A system is possible where each blueprint has limited amount of part that can be placed.
Each time you start filling new part of the blueprint hologram it deducts from that limit.
So you could sell bp with 100% part limit (for manufacturing) with less (for repairs) or with more (so you can make more of them, or just repair more missing parts).

And I'm big fan of idea of blueprints as physical objects. So you need to physically transport them around, protect, sell, ect.
Just as all the other goods in the game.

 

[Amos.37]

My main concern, whether you see the blueprint as intellectual property or labour, is how do you stop another player from buying your blueprint, and then just selling it themselves?
Whether they are claiming the ideas you had or the labour you put in as theirs doesn't matter. What matters is that they are now profiting for your work while you get nothing.
If there is no way to guard against this, what incentive is there for players to make and sell blueprints? Why bother selling them at all?

If I don't get to reap the benefits of selling my design, well then I'll keep it to myself and other players can just make their's from scratch or reverse engineer it.
Having the blueprint as some sort of limited use item, or having some way to check whether a design is an exact copy, at least partially guards against this.

I'm leaning towards having a system where blueprints you made and blueprints you bought are saved as such, and you can only sell blueprints that you made, not bought. A system that checks your blueprints against bought blueprints would, at least partially, prevent just copying the design. This also means that 2 players could independently come up with a similar design. Only an issue if you design a blueprint that is the same as a blueprint you bought.

Obviously there are ways around this. Just move a few parts, as you said. But it's better than nothing.
This gives players more incentive to sell blueprints, which seems to be shaping up to be a significant part of the economy.

Again, to reiterate, if there is no way to ensure that I, as the designer of a blueprint, get some benefit for selling it, what reason do I have to sell it?