Alcazabedabra wrote:It doesn't make sense that a module which is essentially a laboratory for technical development would turn into a blueprint. A blueprint, as a physical object, would be some sort of data storage medium. I envision it as a stack of hard-disk platters or maybe some reels of high-density archival data tape of some sort. It would fit in a briefcase, certainly, and if you want to be real about it, it would fit in something the size of a MicroSD chip.
Yes it would, but the research module essentially doubles as a storage device. Even though blueprints could easily be fit into an extremely miniaturised form, the blueprint data is physically encoded inside the research module. I imagine that once the blueprint data is finalised, the data is "crystallised" into the research module at the logic-gate level, making the blueprint data unmodifiable and as secure as physically possible.
Why all this? For exactly the reasons I give
here - the full blueprint data is never allowed to leave the research module for whatever reason, so the research module
becomes (essentially) the "blueprint" itself. This ensures blueprints remain unique and reduces the chance that blueprint data gets stolen to an absolute minimum - there is only one "weak spot" in the entire setup, and that is the blueprint module itself, which presumably a faction will keep under tight security as often as possible if stores valuable information.
I understand that it might seem strange initially, but once you understand the reasons behind this decision, it should all seem much more plausible.