Blueprints & Development

Blueprints

The majority of ships and attachments in the game are manufactured in Production from blueprints. This article will mainly cover the approaches to get blueprints.

 

There are 3 ways to get blueprints in the game: Decryption, Development and Merit Store. Of course, players can also trade blueprints with each other in the Trading Post.

 

Decryption mainly produce T1 blueprints. Merit Store mainly produce T2 blueprints. Development can produce blueprints of all Tech levels.

 

Blueprint Quality

 

Blueprint quality works the same way as attachment quality, and the quality of the production output is always the same of its blueprint. Since there are currently no blueprints of T1R1 and T1R5 in the game, there are a total of 13 tiers of blueprint quality.

 

The distribution of the 13 tiers in Decryption, Development and Merit Store are as the following:

 

Decryption mainly produces blueprints from T1R2 to T2R1, with a low chance of blueprints up to T2R5.

Merit Store provides blueprints from T1R4 to T2R4, blueprints of higher quality require higher Rep rank.

Development can produce all blueprints from T1R3 to T3R5, and the actual quality of the output varies in a small range depending on the development mode.

 

Decryption

 

Blueprints don't drop by any means in the game. They do come in the form of supply cases that require decryption to open. There are currently 4 types of such cases in the game, corresponding to ships, weapons, devices and attachments respectively.

 

The supply cases containing attachment blueprints can be divided into 5 tiers in terms of quality: basic, common, unique, rare and ultra, or 3 tiers in terms of size: M, L and XL. There is only one type of supply cases for ship blueprints, and they only contain T2 ship blueprints.

 

To open the supply cases and get the blueprints inside, players need to use Decryption from the main menu of their bases.

 

To open a supply case, the player needs to add it to the decryption queue. Each decryption in the queue takes some time to finish, and the time scales with the case's quality and size. Players can also instant finish a decryption by paying Iridium.

 

Merit Store

 

Merit Store is an important approach to get blueprints. Merit store is based on Rep rank of certain nations. The player needs to reach certain Rep ranks of a nation to unlock certain advanced blueprints in its merit store, and all the purchases from this store are paid by Merit Pts earned in the same nation.

 

Note that there are totally distinct items on sale in the Merit Stores of the 4 major nations. So if players want to have full collection of all the blueprints, they need to raise Rep ranks of all nations.

 

Development

 

Almost all the blueprints can be produced in Development. It also works like a blueprint recycling system, turning unwanted low-level blueprints into a high-level blueprint in a certain area. Development is unlocked in chapter 5 of main plot, and can be accessed from the main menu of player's base.

 

There are 3 steps in a typical development process. The first step is selecting the development project from implant, ammo, ship, weapon, device and component.

 

The second step is selecting other options. For weapon development, the options include type, mode and function of the output.

 

At last, depending on the development mode, the player need to provide 2 blueprints of lower quality, but belonging to the same project. They will be consumed when the development is done. The quality of the output is guaranteed to be higher than that of both materials, and players can check the possible quality of the output by tapping the central icon before starting.

 

In addition, only unbound blueprints can be used as materials in Development. Development of advanced blueprints also requires a certain development unit, which can be purchased in different stores.

 

Conclusion

 

Decryption, Development and Merit Store are the main sources of blueprints. Decryption mainly produce T1 blueprints. Merit Store mainly produce T2 blueprints. Development can produce blueprints of all Tech levels.

 

Decryption produces blueprints by opening blueprint supply cases received in various activities. Some blueprints can be purchased from Merit Store when a player reaches certain Rep ranks in a nation and has enough Merit Pts from it. Development uses unwanted low-level blueprints to produce high-level ones from a certain range of qualities.