How blueprints kill this game

[YechTiWawa]

My acquaintance with X-Universe began with X2, in X3 Terran conflict I had been played the most time, and it was really cool. At first I declared war some fraction and captured their ships, bought boarding team. Secondly I captured Boron Kraken with the help of M3+TP. If you played at that time you know that it was difficult, 1-2 missed missiles and you dead. After that you could capture anything. Then there were many story quests, repairing Xenon HUB, my own HC and sector. I could capture and produce any ship (except for Paranid Advanced Perseus) by means of reverse engineering. Yeah it was really fun. Also in X3 there’re 3 pirate’s fractions with their sectors, and fleets.

When I started playing in X4, I learned one simple rule “if you want all equipment and all ships – make friends with everyone”. Yes it’s possible start a war. Yes you can get any station blueprint(thx for EMP), but you never gain equipment and ships blueprints. Motto X4 Foundation it’s TRADE FIGHT BUILD THINK, but there isn’t the “FIGHT” instead of this there’s “Friendship is Magic”.

Dear EGOSOFT, please rework blueprint system, add alternative way to receive blueprints. It isn’t a problem if it takes a long time, and much more resources, but let it will be possible.

[mr.WHO]

Reverse engineering and ship deconstructino for resources is something I'd really like to have in HQ station.

This is also essential for pirate gameplay - who ever saw pirate buying blueprints?
You can steal station blueprints, but not ships and equipment?

[Warnoise]

So much this.

They could learn from starsector on how to make the blueprint system interesting

[Johnson98]

Sometimes it´s better to test things out manually or ask in the spoiler forums if you´re not sure a certain mechanic exists in this game instead of blindly assuming and demanding something.

You can actually acquire ship hull blueprints by emp bombing a desired ship and scanning all the data leaks (4 usually). This works for every ship you don´t own, meaning it also works with abandoned ones.
I´m very fond of this mechanic and don´t think it´s unintended.

There is no way of acquiring equipement blueprints I´m aware of, but having 1 friendly faction shouldn´t be the most serious problem even for the most aggressive of players.
Besides that I don´t get why so many people are going all out just to min-max their ship loadouts and then complaining about having too much peace, noone´s forcing you to do so, but that´s just my opinion.

Having a way to reverse-engineer equipement would be a very handy feature that would also satisfy many min-max players, but I don´t think it´s very high on the priority list at the moment.

[YechTiWawa]

Sometimes it´s better to test things out manually or ask in the spoiler forums if you´re not sure a certain mechanic exists in this game instead of blindly assuming and demanding something.

You can actually acquire ship hull blueprints by emp bombing a desired ship and scanning all the data leaks (4 usually). This works for every ship you don´t own, meaning it also works with abandoned ones.
I´m very fond of this mechanic and don´t think it´s unintended.

There is no way of acquiring equipement blueprints I´m aware of, but having 1 friendly faction shouldn´t be the most serious problem even for the most aggressive of players.
Besides that I don´t get why so many people are going all out just to min-max their ship loadouts and then complaining about having too much peace, noone´s forcing you to do so, but that´s just my opinion.

Having a way to reverse-engineer equipement would be a very handy feature that would also satisfy many min-max players, but I don´t think it´s very high on the priority list at the moment.

Ship blueprints for EMP it's bug viewtopic.php?f=182&t=424008
Every faction have different modules and weapon, if you declare war, you never get it.

[Lord Dakier]

Capture and board ships then make the player bring them to the HQ for breaking them down and reverse-engineering. Give some more functionality and purpose to the limited research menu.

[Socratatus]

Are there spy missions to enable us a chance to nick blueprints?

[Shehriazad]

Add a very hard pirate plot that ends up with the char stealing the bps and possibly building it for FAF, SCA.

[pref]

Reverse engineer would be nice. Would really feel great having to hunting down that mk4 engine or whatever in a pirate game.

While the EMP bug was active i preferred getting BPs that way. Not because of the money but just the feeling of theft. If it took some extra effort to get those BPs it would have been even better.

[Johnson98]

Ship blueprints for EMP it's bug viewtopic.php?f=182&t=424008
Every faction have different modules and weapon, if you declare war, you never get it.

I´ve just skimmed over some patch notes and am pretty sure Imperial Good might be mistaken.
According to Patch 3.00 Beta1 and it´s live version:

"Fixed being able to claim ships by using EMP and repairing signal leak"

This quote refers to a known bug where emp´ing ships caused you to claim them, this was particularly well known with the Xenon when people started capturing K´s and I´s. This doesn´t mention anything about blueprints though and would very much surprise me since it´s a rather old "feature" working since at least v2.50.

Regarding your second point, I´ve already told my opninion on the current craze of min-maxing and the idea of reverse engineering in my first comment. Just because you start a war doesn´t mean your ships suddenly lose any form of access to weapons and equipment. Befriending just 1 faction is already enough to wage wars against everyone else.

While the EMP bug was active i preferred getting BPs that way.

It´s still possible to get ship BPs by emp´ing, this hasn´t been fixed, I just tried it myself on the Split Auxiliary (Monitor / Argus, depending on localization) and got its BP.
Again I don´t really think it´s a bug, I merely think that Imperial Good might have misunderstood what has been fixed with ship emp´ing.

[pref]

It´s still possible to get ship BPs by emp´ing, this hasn´t been fixed, I just tried it myself on the Split Auxiliary (Monitor / Argus, depending on localization) and got its BP.
Again I don´t really think it´s a bug, I merely think that Imperial Good might have misunderstood what has been fixed with ship emp´ing.

Oh really? It did not work after 2.0 or an even earlier patch. That will be fun on my split game, hope it stays like this.

[dholmstr]

This is a part problem when they moved from building equepment in factories to put on ships. Now they get build BY the shipyard directly. This takes away the guns and stuff as cargo os cannot be dropped or shipped around as goods. Even in Rebirth all turrets were wares.

[Sturmer]

Reverse engineering and ship deconstructino for resources is something I'd really like to have in HQ station.

This is also essential for pirate gameplay - who ever saw pirate buying blueprints?
You can steal station blueprints, but not ships and equipment?

I think there's a mod for that on Nexus. "Ship analysis" by Mysterial.

[sandalle]

Reverse engineering and ship deconstructino for resources is something I'd really like to have in HQ station.

This is also essential for pirate gameplay - who ever saw pirate buying blueprints?
You can steal station blueprints, but not ships and equipment?

I think there's a mod for that on Nexus. "Ship analysis" by Mysterial.

There's Ship Reverse Engineering (also on Steam Workshop but not Nexus) from Mysterial.
There's also Recycle Ships and Stations by iforgotmysocks (also on Nexus, but not Steam Workshop).

Two different takes on how to get blueprints out of captured ships.

[YechTiWawa]

Add a very hard pirate plot that ends up with the char stealing the bps and possibly building it for FAF, SCA.

Yeah It would be really cool.
SPP Leader
"-Hey man, we need a new shipyard... I mean The FIRST shipyard, but we haven't contruction ship, mining fleet, technologies and resources. And everyone hates us... Just grab all of this…"

[Hairless-Ape]

I agree. Having to jump through so many hoops to get blueprints ruins a lot of the game. It's just more clutter to keep you busy rather than something interesting.

[grapedog]

FIrst thing they need to do is when a faction is eliminated, their blueprints go to their other similar faction. Like if Argon is eliminated, ANT gets all the ARG specific blueprints... so they're not gone completely.

The SCA should have most or all blueprints for sale at a significant markup price... or you can do missions for the pirate factions to get a reduction to only a small markup perhaps. Do this Hard mission for SCA, and the blueprint that was 150% of normal cost is now only 120% cost.

[Berhg]

FIrst thing they need to do is when a faction is eliminated, their blueprints go to their other similar faction. Like if Argon is eliminated, ANT gets all the ARG specific blueprints... so they're not gone completely.

The SCA should have most or all blueprints for sale at a significant markup price... or you can do missions for the pirate factions to get a reduction to only a small markup perhaps. Do this Hard mission for SCA, and the blueprint that was 150% of normal cost is now only 120% cost.

Good ideas!

Additionally, I would like to be able to bar my warfs and yards from selling to certain factions.

[grapedog]

Additionally, I would like to be able to bar my warfs and yards from selling to certain factions.

you can do that already with the restrict factions options. i've done that to all 3 of my shipyards because HOP and ARG, and ARG and ZYA were constantly fighting at my shipyards, causing traffic issues and congestion. So now all three are set to different shipyards. ARG can buy at the Reach, HOP can buy at Nap For, and ZYA can buy at 2Grand....

[Sturmer]

Btw., if I have a ship production facility that I bought BP from Argon for, can I use it to build other races' ships in it if I have BPs for them?