I’ve seen a couple of people mention the idea of blueprints for buildings which can be bought and sold, I think it’s a brilliant idea and was thinking a little about how it could work.
I’m primarily a builder but monetising my builds so that I can buy materials for more builds isn’t easy, at the moment the only way is via footfall. If there was a way to sell blueprints of buildings (along with all the materials needed to build them) it would immediately add a new segment to the economy, in addition it would incentivise interesting builds, and might help to reduce the number of ugly cube buildings (IMO) which litter the landscape.
How would it work?
Option 1.
Dragon Quest Builders has a great way of blueprinting your builds and uploading them for others to download. A segment of your settlement (eg an area of plots 4x4x4) is dedicated for blueprint building. Anything within it can be uploaded and then downloaded by others. If you have more than one build within the area then you can scroll through them, each of them loading in front of you.
Option 2.
Create ‘Blueprint Plots’, they can be placed anywhere, and in any configuration. Anything contained within the plots would be part of the blueprint. Buyers could switch to ‘Blueprint Plot View’ mode to see which plots were included in the build (a bit like the current plot view mode).
With both options the purchase would be a blueprint build machine, once you put into it all the required materials it would auto-build everything within the blueprint plots. A list of all the required materials for the build would be available to view before purchase.
I think I prefer option 2. Here’s an example…
I have built a (roughly to scale) Millennium Falcon in Endor on Antar VI. A potential buyer could approach it and switch to Blueprint View Mode to see what plots were included in the purchase, and which and how many materials were required. Next to the shop stand which sells the blueprint machine I could have a micro-shop which sells all the materials needed for the build.
In addition to inspiring interesting builds and hopefully improving the look of settlements, it would energise and diversify the economy. People would be requiring wildly differing but specific components for their builds (my Millennium Falcon build also contains machine parts and spark links and generators etc); so markets which sell directly to blueprint material shops or blueprint customers would open up.
Please can we have some form of Blueprint Build sell/buy option in the game!