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Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 6:09 am
by ThymineC
Idunno wrote:Can my researchers be robots? :shifty:
I don't know.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 6:37 am
by Idunno
Can blueprints be copied? Because several of the mechanics that would allow the public full unrestricted access to the tech require blueprints to be duplicated. :squirrel:

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 6:39 am
by ThymineC
Idunno wrote:Can blueprints be copied? Because several of the mechanics that would allow the public full unrestricted access to the tech require blueprints to be duplicated. :squirrel:
No they can't. Blueprints are always unique.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 6:52 am
by Idunno
ThymineC wrote:
Idunno wrote:Can blueprints be copied? Because several of the mechanics that would allow the public full unrestricted access to the tech require blueprints to be duplicated. :squirrel:
No they can't. Blueprints are always unique.
Which means that full, free, distribution of technology is not possible. Once again, I'd like to direction to the inventor who wants everyone to enjoy his work no matter where they are. :ghost:

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:01 am
by ThymineC
Idunno wrote:
ThymineC wrote:
Idunno wrote:Can blueprints be copied? Because several of the mechanics that would allow the public full unrestricted access to the tech require blueprints to be duplicated. :squirrel:
No they can't. Blueprints are always unique.
Which means that full, free, distribution of technology is not possible. Once again, I'd like to direction to the inventor who wants everyone to enjoy his work no matter where they are. :ghost:
It probably won't be offered freely but check the previous posts where I already specify how the full distribution of technology considered to be in the "public domain" would be possible.

This might not be quite as it works in real life, but it should serve to illustrate the concept better:

If you want to buy a type of Hyundai, you can buy one from any outlet that sells them.

If you want to make a type of Hyundai, you can speak to the Hyundai corporation and, if they trust you, they may allow you to produce Hyundais. You'll probably need to pay something in return.

If it's a very old type of Hyundai, then Hyundai may readily allow anyone to buy licenses to manufacture them themselves. Or Hyundai might sell the blueprints to the government and the government might provide licenses to manufacture the Hyundai to anyone who requests it.

If you want to altruistically give away your technology, have people fly over to where your blueprint is located with their research and production modules and allow them to seed them with your blueprint module. Or if you're really altruistic, you can buy your own research and blueprint modules, seed them and then give them away to others. But this will cost you unless you ask for money to cover those costs.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:11 am
by Idunno
So can I reverse engineer the tech?

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:17 am
by ThymineC
Idunno wrote:So can I reverse engineer the tech?
You can't reverse engineer the tech and get back a duplicate of it, no, because that would violate the given that all blueprints are unique.

What you may be able to do, if RE is to be implemented, is acquire and feed assemblers into a research module. All assemblers might have a small chance (e.g. 0.01%) of being successfully reverse engineered when used inside a research module. This probability might be able to be changed by performing research into assembler tech.

But the idea is that if you do manage to reverse engineer an assembler, you get a technology that is similar but not identical to the one that it's based on. As mcsven said before.

This is only if we actually still want RE.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:19 am
by Idunno
Just so long as there is RE and copy able blueprints I'm fine with it. :ghost:

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:35 am
by ThymineC
Idunno wrote:Just so long as there is RE and copy able blueprints I'm fine with it. :ghost:
But there aren't copyable blueprints. I've said that like a dozen times. :?

Unless you mean, like, making quasi-copies. Blueprints which are similar but not quite identical.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:37 am
by Idunno
ThymineC wrote:
Idunno wrote:Just so long as there is RE and copy able blueprints I'm fine with it. :ghost:
But there aren't copyable blueprints. I've said that like a dozen times. :?

Unless you mean, like, making quasi-copies.
What do you mean by quasi-copies?

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:37 am
by ThymineC
Idunno wrote:
ThymineC wrote:
Idunno wrote:Just so long as there is RE and copy able blueprints I'm fine with it. :ghost:
But there aren't copyable blueprints. I've said that like a dozen times. :?

Unless you mean, like, making quasi-copies.
What do you mean by quasi-copies?
Blueprints which are similar but not quite identical. Something you might get out of the reverse engineering process.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 7:39 am
by Idunno
I'm cool with that. :ghost:

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 10:16 am
by Alcazabedabra
Okay, ThymineC, I like where you're headed.

The only objection I have is a relatively unimportant technical detail.

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.

The physicality of a research module is a big room with microscopes and spectrometers and people in white coats carrying clipboards. The physicality of a blueprint is a little package of high-density data storage media.

It breaks immersion to have this sort of odd physical transformation in the game, and it would make a player go "Huh? Wut?" if he had to buy a new research lab every time his research team cranked out a blueprint.

It might make sense if you had to re-stock your research module or somehow do something to it between research jobs in order to keep researching, but lose the whole module for each blueprint? As a player, I'd resent that a bit and it would break my immersion in the game.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 10:24 am
by ThymineC
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.

Re: A Reconstruction of Production Mechanics

Posted: Thu May 15, 2014 10:43 am
by Idunno
That effectively limits how you steal the tech. :ghost: