Thoughts on patent nerf?

[Deantwo]

I will likely remove patents entirely.

Can anyone make a case for keeping them?

The only thing that was really useful about patents was the idea of hiding advanced technologies from the player before they have any chance of making them. For example such as not showing gravity-drive vehicles and components before the player had been to the moon and made a colony.

The main issue with patents however is the insane amount of them and how they are listed everywhere. I mentioned a few times that it might be better if patents were only researched at a university, that would clean up all other buildings a lot. But maybe to minimize the number of patents they could instead be made into more broad technology topics. For example you could have a simple "artificial gravity technology patent" that is then required by all gravity-drive items. The patent would be researched at a university or might even require a small story quest to be finished.

I really really like the idea of the "wormhole FTL drive patent" requiring you to do a little story quest where you have to pilot a prototype ship through a wormhole and back. The story quest could even double as a tutorial on how wormhole polarities work.

People love having the idea of "research", but it shouldn't be as complicated as the current patents.

This will also cause the distinction between different FTL drives to be lost. There will just be two FTL modules: wormhole and warp. Capability is determined by how much capacitor you have, as now. It’s just not further limited by the module “level”.

The old way of simply limiting it by a ship's capacitor seems fine I guess. Unless you would want some of the FTL levels locked behind a story quest or as loot from pirate encounters and exploration.

I would at the very least suggest getting rid of the wormhole P FTL drive, it has always caused more confusion than good.