Oh my holy goodness so much text. I hate to add a bunch of more text here, but I think a lot of people are confusing the real-world with StarMade. For instance, licenses to copy ships in StarMade is NOT equal to a large corporation obtaining a copyright on a very basic and widely used mechanic and then suing a bunch of smaller companies for using said mechanic.
Why protecting intellectual property enables the proliferation of creativity:
The copyright system was originally created to help protect inventors so that they COULD share their designs, without being ripped off. The intent of this idea for StarMade is the same. It would not stifle creativity, it would allow it to flourish. In the real world, here are some examples of copyright allowing a product to be developed and then sold: the cotton gin, the telephone, the lightbulb, the computer processor. Without copyrights, inventors never would have been able to actually benefit from their design creations. Other companies would have immediately copied their design and sold it as their own. What incentive would inventors have had to create something if it made them homeless in the process while some other person got rich off their design? In fact, much of the success and technology we have today was 100% reliant on the copyright system. The inventors only created what they did because they knew they might be able to make a living from the results of their labor. Maybe even get rich from it.
Why is a lack of intellectual property protection a problem in StarMade?
In StarMade, people do not generally freely trade their designs or sell ships, because they know the person they sell to can easily just copy the design. Players cannot really sell their design, they are only selling the convenience of a filled blueprint and the parts it contains, so they cannot expect to get the true price value of their labor when selling their ships. Essentially, sellers are always forced to sell for less than they should have to, and there is always a race to the bottom. It is never in the seller's best interest to sell a design they worked hard on. The more thought and care they put into the design, the less of a return on their time they get.
But in the real world, businesses do not copyright everything, do they?
Businesses generally do not need to copyright every little part of a product they create, because part of how they succeed is by streamlining their design process, using quality materials, working with distributors to bring their prices down, ect. They also sell products that the consumer cannot make themselves. But in StarMade, any cannon computer is the same quality as another cannon computer. Anybody can create a cannon computer. There are no differences in how a ship is constructed. Also, price cannot be brought down by buying in bulk or what have you, a cannon computer always costs the same amount in resources to create. It should also be mentioned that in the real world, people cannot just instantly copy/paste a product, like their car and then sell a duplicate of it to someone else, assuming they have some scrap metal laying around. But in StarMade, you can. And therein lies the problem.
So, is there actually a demand for a ship building/selling profession in StarMade?
Yes! A lot of people WANT to share their designs and to sell their ships, but they simply cannot do so right now without having to sell their ships for much lower prices than is deserved. There are plenty of people who would enjoy amassing wealth on a server by creating new ships and selling them, creating repeat business, maintaining their business relationships, etc., rather than the hum-drum life of constant mining. But then there are other players who would love to be able to mine a lot and then buy a bunch of ships from ship sellers. Allowing viable trade options for ships in StarMade would benefit both of these players. That is the whole goal of an economy in a society, by allowing people to create how they would like and trade regularly with each other, it benefits everybody. However, right now, the player who might prefer to mine a lot can simply get one design and then make as many copies of the ship as they would like. There is no repeat business for that ship designer. Given that it takes so much work to create a new ship, it invalidates ship-building/selling as an in-game profession. It stifles creativity and gives no real opportunity to inventors and designers. So people generally just build ships for themselves OR for the community at large because that is what they enjoy. But this excludes all the players who would enjoy actually selling their designs for in-game currency.
So, what other problems might exist for "licenses"?
I think the biggest problem with this idea is that may not come across as realistic within the StarMade universe and so will detract from the immersion in the game. For example, we are moving from blueprints to shipyards to make things more realistic, right? How would a "license" that adds artificial barriers to copying a blueprint make things more immersive? Well, it wouldn't.
How can we make this idea "realistic" within the StarMade universe to preserve immersion?
First we need to look to the future about this, not the present. Blueprints are on their way out, I think, in favor of shipyard designs. I think blueprints will still exist in the listing, but the meta-item will be gone. Blueprints will instead be used to create a "shipyard design," which is then used in a shipyard.
So let's think about how in the "reality" of StarMade shipyards actually work. How does the shipyard deconstruct a ship to repair it or create a design from it? I imagine it would interlink with the ship-core computer, which then does the actual inner probing to determine the blocks within the ship. So to implement a "license" type idea, the ship-core computer would only give specific access based on permissions. Right now, players can't just enter any ship, can they? They have to either have faction access, private access, or the ship is unfactioned so anybody can enter it. Blueprints are the same way, right? Permissions to repair or copy a design would merely be an extension of those types of permissions. So here is what I suggest.
- Have every ship come with a shipyard design, built into the ship-core computer of the ship. This would allow "repairing" in a ship yard at any time. There would be no need to have a shipyard design to repair a ship. However, this functionality can only be implemented to a ship when it is either built (from a shipyard design or blueprint) OR when the build-in repair design is updated/written in a shipyard.
- Add some permissions to the ship's "core" computer which would limit access to this schematic. These schematic permissions could ONLY be changed by the ship designer, and would offer three types of options. 1. Allow ship to be repaired. 2. Allow core-computer repair design to be updated in a shipyard. 3. Allow shipyard design to be created.
So, here's how it might play out on the server:
1. A ship seller named "Steve" is selling a warship, "Omega 50" to player "SirHugsAlot." Before selling it, he accesses the ship menu and enters the "Design Permissions" menu. He has a few checkboxes he can choose from. "Allow shipyard repairing," "Allow shipyard repair design to be updated," and "Allow shipyard access to design for copying." He selects "Allow shipyard repairs" and "Allow shipyard repair design to be updated," but de-selects "Allow shipyard access to design for copying." This inputs his name as the "Designer" into the ship-yard computer. In the future, only he or she will have access to change these settings or to remove the permissions entirely.
2. He then sells the ship to SirHugsAlot for 5 million credits.
3. SirHugsAlot suffers some damage later on while attacking some pirates. He takes the ship to his own shipyard, docks it, and presses the "Repair" button. The ship is repaired. No design needed.
4. SirHugsAlot has an idea on how to make the weapons a little more powerful, so adds some cannons to the ship. He then clicks the "Update repair design" button in his shipyard. When he repairs in the future, it includes his modification when repairing the ship.
5. SirHugsAlot decides he wants 5 more of the ships. So he clicks the "Deconstruct and Create Design" button on his shipyard, with the ship still docked. He receives an error, "Ship-core computer returned the following error: You do not have access to copy this design"
6. SirHugsAlot sighs, but really wants more of these ships. So he goes back to Steve and says, "Hey, I want 5 more of the Omega 50 ship. I paid 5 million last time.. but since I'm buying in bulk, can I get a discount and buy 4 and get one free, so it would be 20 million credits?" Steve says "Nope, actually demand for that ship has gone up and I'll need to charge you more this time, so it will be 6 million per ship, 30 million credits total." SirHugsAlot says, "This ship has been awesome to use, so I will pay that. Thank you for creating such nice ships for me to use."
Since it would be tied to each individual ship, the blueprint could be freely shared anywhere, online or otherwise. These permissions would only be added AFTER the ship is created. The system would also be pretty simple and easy to understand. It would allow ship builders and designers to feel free to sell their ships, and this could also make sense within the StarMade universe.
Also, I think these permissions should be OPTIONAL. If a server admin changes a setting, "Use Design Permissions" to "false," then this section of a ship would simply not exist on that server. So for players that want to be ship-designers and sellers, they would prefer servers that have this setting on. For people who would prefer otherwise, they could start or play on servers where intellectual property rights are not recognized.
