Not sharing ship blueprint rights

[Eranok]

Also, the limited uses of a blueprint (you can read here 'one time use' and have many of them, but maybe you can stack them) promotes ecosystems, where some groups will stay close to some builders corporations, protect them, etc...

I think that 'unlearnable' and 'limited use' BP are much better for the sandbox MMO part of the game. More players interactions, cooperations, more manual things
Then the 'learnable' 'infinite use' BP are much better for the space opera large scale war part of the game, where we care about armies vs armies before anything else.
I d seriously vouch for the first solution given my vision of the game that said

 

[PopeUrban]

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?

Designing a ship is a time, labor, and quite frankly intelligence intensive process.

Even in a theoretical system where the only blueprints are available are infinite use transferrable copies people would most definitely buy a blueprint simply to avoid having to do all that work on their own, either because they aren't interestd in designing ships, or because they find it a bit over their head.

Its the exact same reason someone would buy an assembled ship even though they could make that ship themselves.

I know how to build a table. I know how to get the materials to build a table. There's nothing stopping me from building a table. I have only built one table in my life. Quite frankly it was more trouble than it was worth and I hated doing it so I have bought every other table I have ever owned. The same goes for hamburgers, coffee, and myriad other products or services.

People are hard wired to avoid things they don't like doing, and people will happily pay someone else to do them if they have the means to do so.

 

[Amos.37]

Designing a ship is a time, labor, and quite frankly intelligence intensive process.

Even in a theoretical system where the only blueprints are available are infinite use transferrable copies people would most definitely buy a blueprint simply to avoid having to do all that work on their own, either because they aren't interestd in designing ships, or because they find it a bit over their head.

Its the exact same reason someone would buy an assembled ship even though they could make that ship themselves.

I know how to build a table. I know how to get the materials to build a table. There's nothing stopping me from building a table. I have only built one table in my life. Quite frankly it was more trouble than it was worth and I hated doing it so I have bought every other table I have ever owned. The same goes for hamburgers, coffee, and myriad other products or services.

People are hard wired to avoid things they don't like doing, and people will happily pay someone else to do them if they have the means to do so.

I get that, that buying a ship or blueprint is about convenience.
But that doesn't answer my question. If there is no way to ensure that another player doesn't copy my blueprint and then start selling them, what incentive do I have to sell them at all?

I'm not talking about someone piece-by-piece reverse engineering a design. I'm talking about someone just making a copy and paste of the blueprint and selling it themselves.
Eranok's idea of unlearnable and limited use blueprints provides at least some protection.

Still doesn't prevent reverse engineering, but short of a commercial ship register and/or plagiarism checker I don't know how you could prevent that.
And as you said, for a lot of people, buying it would be easier than reverse engineering it. But if blueprints are too easy to copy and distribute, then what incentive do designers have to sell designs at all?

Doesn't have to be a register or plagiarism checker, but there needs to be some limitations to copying and transferring blueprints to stimulate an economy around it. Otherwise a designer may as well be a leaf salesman in Autumn.

 

[PopeUrban]

I get that, that buying a ship or blueprint is about convenience.
But that doesn't answer my question. If there is no way to ensure that another player doesn't copy my blueprint and then start selling them, what incentive do I have to sell them at all?

I'm not talking about someone piece-by-piece reverse engineering a design. I'm talking about someone just making a copy and paste of the blueprint and selling it themselves.
Eranok's idea of unlearnable and limited use blueprints provides at least some protection.

Still doesn't prevent reverse engineering, but short of a commercial ship register and/or plagiarism checker I don't know how you could prevent that.
And as you said, for a lot of people, buying it would be easier than reverse engineering it. But if blueprints are too easy to copy and distribute, then what incentive do designers have to sell designs at all?

Doesn't have to be a register or plagiarism checker, but there needs to be some limitations to copying and transferring blueprints to stimulate an economy around it. Otherwise a designer may as well be a leaf salesman in Autumn.

Explain to me the difference between your blueprint and a ship built with your blueprint used to generate a new blueprint.

My point is there's not a really a way to control for that. No manner of locking down or controlling blueprints can possible hope to be effective because nobody needs your blueprint to build a copy of your design. This isn't EVE where every crafted item is a unique type and blueprints unlock the ability to craft it. This is a game in which any player, with a handful of easy to acquire tools, can build an exact copy of anything they see, will see, or have seen.

The point of buying a blueprint is to build a ship. If I have a ship, I can use it to make a blueprint. Because this is impossible to control for it is a waste of time to try. Your job as a ship designer isn't to fart out blueprints, and that's not where you would have ever made most of your money. Your job is to design ships. Selling the same ship design over and over would have been an unsustainable living anyway.

Again, trying to create any form of copyrighting in a building game is a huge waste of time. The game is purpose designed to make it easy to replicate and improve upon any given design. The point of blueprints is not withholding your designs, it is sharing them. If you wanted to withold your design you wouldn't be releasing a blueprint designed specifically to make copies of it. Your ship design is not so special that it warrants "limited edition" blueprints or anything like that because it contains no particularly notable differences in basic function than any other ship.

Being a designer is and will always be valuable, but trying to be a blueprint salesman was always going to be a dead end job no matter what.

 

[Amos.37]

So do explain, from where will the players that don't want to design there own ships obtain blueprints? Especially when "people would most definitely buy a blueprint simply to avoid having to do all that work on their own, either because they aren't interested in designing ships, or because they find it a bit over their head."

And if reverse engineering is also labour intensive, same applies.

Let's say a player want's a ship, but want's to be able to build it themselves. In that case, buying a blueprint makes more sense than buying a premade ship.
Where do they get said blueprint?

 

[PopeUrban]

So do explain, from where will the players that don't want to design there own ships obtain blueprints? Especially when "people would most definitely buy a blueprint simply to avoid having to do all that work on their own, either because they aren't interested in designing ships, or because they find it a bit over their head."

And if reverse engineering is also labour intensive, same applies.

Let's say a player want's a ship, but want's to be able to build it themselves. In that case, buying a blueprint makes more sense than buying a premade ship.
Where do they get said blueprint?

They buy it from you, or if you're so paranoid about your design being "stolen" they buy it from someone else who would rather take their money because they don't care.

The idea that nobody's going to sell blueprints simply because they can't guarantee nobody will reverse engineer or copy the design is silly. Plenty of people will happily sell those blueprints.

The difference is the people happy to sell them aren't under the impression its their primary business. Its supplementary income and advertising. If you want to be a "professional" ship designer, you were never going to do it by selling blueprints any more than ford was going to make a fortune by selling car blueprints. You're making your money by outputting things of hard value (ships, which you've designed and built yourself or with a team) or non-replicable services (custom ship designs)

 

[CalenLoki]

If I have a ship, I can use it to make a blueprint. Because this is impossible to control for it is a waste of time to try.

AFAIK you can never create blueprint out of physical ship. Blueprints can be only created in ship editor.
So while rewerse-engineering is absolutely possible, simple copy-paste is not. That's already implemented in game.
It also means that rewerse-engineering is quite tedious, as you have to go out of ship designer every time you want to look at the physical ship.

 

[PopeUrban]

AFAIK you can never create blueprint out of physical ship. Blueprints can be only created in ship editor.
So while rewerse-engineering is absolutely possible, simple copy-paste is not. That's already implemented in game.
It also means that rewerse-engineering is quite tedious, as you have to go out of ship designer every time you want to look at the physical ship.

Oh I wasn't implying that. Just that the nature of a building game makes attempting to control for intellectual property rights pointless. Reverse engineering would absolutely be a pain in the ass, but chances are the only thing people actually want to copy about your design would be major structural or mechanical systems that are, relatively speaking, pretty easy to copy due to being made out of a small number of parts.

In addition to this, the only people copying your designs, for the most part, are other ship designers.

While your new "trick" will be quickly democratized, I'd wager there probably aren't that many people who care to make a 100% exact copy of your blueprint in the first place becausest all they need to market the design is whatever small design "trick" you thought was so good it needed copyright law.

Like lets say you invented the slave turret system se see in trailers, in a world it wan't in the trailer. That's a design "trick" right. Its a feature that at the time of sale, is unique to your ship.

People don't really care about this ship, nor do they want to reverse engineer the ship. They just want to reverse engineer that system. This is fairly quick and easy to do for most contraptions in a building game.

 

[Amos.37]

AFAIK you can never create blueprint out of physical ship. Blueprints can be only created in ship editor.
So while rewerse-engineering is absolutely possible, simple copy-paste is not. That's already implemented in game.
It also means that rewerse-engineering is quite tedious, as you have to go out of ship designer every time you want to look at the physical ship.

This puts me at ease somewhat. I never expected a way to prevent reverse engineering. Heck, I even certain players and companies to specialise in it.
But it is good to know that designs can't easily be copied.
Still unclear how transferable blueprints themselves will be.
Gameplay wise, I'm wanting blueprints to be marketable so that designers don't have to spend ages making copies of ships to sell if they want to make money off it. Rather they could make a design, put the blueprint up for sale, and be working on a new design.
I'm sure some people would be into it, it's a big world, but personally I'd find making copy after copy of the same ship to sell very tedious.

 

[kevinTOC]

Why would you sell blueprints in the first place? Wouldn't it be much better to simply build the ships, then sell them? I for one would not share any of my blueprints if I build a ship and decide to sell it to people.

Setting up a system with dealers (or ordering in bulk from the factory) seems like a much better and far more secure way to sell your vessels.

 

[CalenLoki]

Because settings up production line, gathering materials, advertising and all that kind of stuff may be not fun for someone who likes designing and is not too much into teamwork.
Don't forget that gaming is for fun, not stockpiling virtual dollars. Some funds are needed for combat testing ships of course, but that's still tool, not the goal.

 

[kevinTOC]

Because settings up production line, gathering materials, advertising and all that kind of stuff may be not fun for someone who likes designing and is not too much into teamwork.
Don't forget that gaming is for fun, not stockpiling virtual dollars. Some funds are needed for combat testing ships of course, but that's still tool, not the goal.

Obviously, I can't talk for everyone, but isn't the actual building of the ships the joy? It seems -to me at least- that the joy of building ships is the actual building itself. Besides, aren't hand-made products generally more valuable?

 

[Amos.37]

For me at least, the joy comes from designing a ship, testing it, improving it, etc. Not from making copy after copy to sell.
Hence, I'd like to be able to make a design, build it a couple times, improve it, sell it as a blueprint, and then be working on a new design.
That's why I'd like some level of security, that as soon as I sell a single blueprint, it doesn't immediately get copied by the person who bought it, and then they are selling it (the blueprint, not the ship).
A player who buys the blueprint could then build and sell the ship, but not sell the original blueprint.
I still expect the design to eventually get copied and become widely available, but that process should take time and effort, like having to reverse engineer a ship. This means that at the very least, the original designer gets the beneftis of the sale for a little while.
Yes, others can still copy the design and make it widely available, but doing so at least takes some time.

This means there is benefit in designing and selling blueprints, the designer still has to constantly improve and/or make new designs to make any sort of a business, and the designer doesn't have to spend lots of time banging out copies of each design to sell, they can just market the blueprint.

 

[Eranok]

Each times someone come to you to buy a blueprint (or a yolol chip, same idea), its a testimony of appreciation, and another opportunity for more players interaction, like alliances, politics/news, advices etc... I personally see a lot of value in those small things

 

[kevinTOC]

Each times someone come to you to buy a blueprint (or a yolol chip, same idea), its a testimony of appreciation, and another opportunity for more players interaction, like alliances, politics/news, advices etc... I personally see a lot of value in those small things

Problem is, you can't expect everyone to be nice. Not everyone will be honorable, and there will be someone who inevitably will try to sell it off as his/her own idea, and possibly succeed in doing so.

For me at least, the joy comes from designing a ship, testing it, improving it, etc. Not from making copy after copy to sell.

Ultimately, you wouldn't have to. Given enough time, you could likely completely automate your ship building by creating modules, and bolting those together.

 

[Verbatos]

Problem is, you can't expect everyone to be nice. Not everyone will be honorable, and there will be someone who inevitably will try to sell it off as his/her own idea, and possibly succeed in doing so.

Exactly, it will increase player interaction. What are you going to do when someone steals your design? Fight back. Whole financial wars could be started over stolen designs, creating interesting situations to facilitate player interaction.

 

[Sellka]

Gotta make that security tight on yo factories.

 

[PopeUrban]

Exactly, it will increase player interaction. What are you going to do when someone steals your design? Fight back. Whole financial wars could be started over stolen designs, creating interesting situations to facilitate player interaction.

I still find the concept of people "stealing" designs laughable.

Its a bunch of simple elements bolted together. Building a spaceship in this game isn't rocket science. It's barely an erector set in terms of complexity.

Your design, no matter who you are, really isn't as special as this thread might have you believe it is. Industrial espionage and patent law is a thing in real life because everything from the materials science to microscopic arrangement of transistors is involved in building a thing. It takes tens of years of R&D, testing, legal maneuvering, construction of modification of specialized industrial processes, etc' to bring a product to market. It's complicated, costly, and not something any one person can do.

In starbase you're bolting together premade bits, all of which are bigger than your head, and writing code less complex than the entry level BASIC they teach in elementary schools. You can do it in a simulator with 100% perfect mirroring to the end product at zero cost in materials or facilities usage, which makes all of your R&D effectively cost free. You can do it by yourself in a few hours. Anybody can learn to do it extremely quickly because it is a building game and that's the entire point of a building game.

Your design isn't as special or hard to invent as you think it is, and nobody's going to start a war over it. They're going to copy any good idea you had that they hadn't thought of, and the game is purposefully designed to make it easy for them to do so. They don't need your blueprint, your spaceship, or your permission to do so. Any innovation is these designs is very simply communicated and duplicated because every single thing you could possibly build with these kinds of building systems is a very simple machine.

People aren't seeking out designers because they have a magic ability to build things. Anybody can do that. This isn't real life where it takes special skills and training to design a spaceship or a car or whatever. People are seeking out designers because they're too lazy to do it themselves. Most of these people are far more likely to buy a spaceship off the rack than a blueprint for a spaceship in the first place.

Your job as a designer is pointless and unprofitable unless you're making spaceships. That means either being part of an organization that helps you make them, or making them yourself.

A few people might buy your blueprints, but the number of people too lazy to design a spaceship but not too lazy to get the materials and fill it in when they have the option of just buying a spaceship outright is a number that's just too small to be functional as a primary industry.

 

[kevinTOC]

Exactly, it will increase player interaction. What are you going to do when someone steals your design? Fight back. Whole financial wars could be started over stolen designs, creating interesting situations to facilitate player interaction.

Who's going to bother with that? How is a little team of designers going to face off against a multi-million currency clan?

And as @PopeUrban mentioned, why would you sell your blueprints? It does seem like a rather poor choice of business. If someone bothers to buy a ship, why would he/she buy a blueprint, if there are plenty of clans that will likely sell ready-made ships? Why bother spending resources on a blueprint, when you can just buy a complete ship off the wall? You can buy entire ships from Kingdom or Empire, without spending any of your valuable resources. And of course, you also end up releasing something that could potentially ruin your business in a single snap.

This is a game, it's something people do for fun, as a hobby. Not as a job. If it becomes too time-consuming going after the players who took their designs, those people will end up getting fed up, and quitting the game.

 

[dusty]

.. You can buy entire ships from Kingdom or Empire, without spending any of your valuable resources..

You actually can't buy the military ships from these factions :b That being said, I think there's been a bit of an oversimplification of how much goes into designing a ship. Sure, you can slap a couple boxes together, laden it with devices, and call it good.. But a lot of people also look for certain aesthetics and styles, which can take a long while to form, and especially so once you start packing devices into a constrained space. While modeling in a 3D program with the assets is not a perfect comparison, it's a good estimation of the time investment that goes with these ships; and it took me probably in excess of 30-40 hours to produce a small ship that I was happy with (and I'm comfortable with the control schema of Maya, so I wasn't struggling with the basics there).

On another note, blueprints (as far as I'm aware) aren't necessarily limited to the materials set forth by the designer. It could totally be an option to buy a blueprint and fill it with cheaper and/or lighter materials to save cost, instead of buying the ship pre-built to a specification you may not even need.