Blueprints are plans for station modules, ship hulls, and ship components. You start with a few for simple station modules, and will have to buy or steal others.
Ship and equipment blueprints
Blueprints for ship hulls and each piece of equipment (shield generator, weapon, engine) are required to be able to build that ship with that equipment at your own wharf or shipyard.
Ship and equipment blueprints can only be purchased from faction representatives. Factions sell blueprints for their own ships and equipment (so you cannot buy blueprints for Teladi ships from the Argon representative).
There is no way to obtain ship or equipment blueprints except by buying them. They cannot be stolen.
Station module blueprints
Blueprints for station modules are required to build the corresponding module on your stations.
Blueprints are specific to the exact module type and size (e.g. “Teladi L solid storage” module is a different blueprint than “Teladi M solid storage”).
Station module blueprints can be bought or stolen. The exception is blueprints for Shipyards, Wharfs and Equipment Docks. (These are very profitable, so are gated behind the need to first accumulate enough money by other means to buy their blueprints from a faction representative.) You can only buy these blueprints, they can’t be stolen.
Blueprint variations
Most “factory” modules are common to all factions (e.g. water production, field coil production) and so only have one version of the blueprint.
The Teladi, though, have their own version of Refined Metal called Teladianium, and so have their own Teladi version of all modules that use it (Advanced Composites, Hull Parts, Engine Parts, Scanning Arrays). If you intend to use Teladianium instead of Refined metals, be sure you’re building the Teladi version of these factory modules!
Storage, connector, food and habitat modules are specific to each faction and have their own blueprints, though you can use them on any station (you can build “Argon” stations with Teladi storage modules or connectors if you prefer their appearance and have the appropriate blueprint, for instance).
Stealing blueprints
Blueprints can be stolen by setting off an EMP bomb on a station module and then scanning the resulting signal leaks.
To steal a blueprint, you need two things:
- A spacesuit EMP bomb, which you can craft from components at a workbench
- Completed research item at the player HQ (there is a research item for stealing dock module blueprints, another for storage module blueprints, etc)
See EMP Bomb section for information on spacesuit EMP bombs.
You can only steal one blueprint per EMP.
There is no reputation penalty for stealing blueprints, but there may be penalties for setting off the EMP bomb itself.