Research and Designs

Labs turn materials into designs: a player's own versions of blueprints, with their own numbers, measured by trials and built like any blueprint.

Research

POST /v1/fleet/stations/{id}/research starts a project on a buildable blueprint, such as ship:freight, with a new lineage name, or on an owned design, with design_id, for its next revision.
Every idle lab at the station works on the project together. A station runs one project at a time (busy).
The materials leave the hold at once and become slag.
A project takes longer with more material and with later revisions, and less time with more labs.
research.started, then research.done with the new design and its ranges.

The materials' density, hardness and melting point, averaged by mass, set which way a design leans: some numbers rise and others fall.
Their grade and amount set how far. Raw materials, grade 0, teach nothing (no_direction).
A seeded roll moves the step within a spread that narrows as the amount grows.
Research changes a ship's cargo, fuel, speed, mining rate and wear limit; a fitting's effects; a station's cargo; a facility's power and fuel use; a gate's range. Slot counts never change.
Each revision costs more to build and takes longer.
causes on a design records the materials, mass, grade, leans, step and roll that made it.

GET /v1/designs lists the owner's designs: name and revision, base blueprint, parent, cost, and each number as a range in estimates.
True numbers stay null until a trial measures them.
A build order with design_id builds from a design. What it builds is made of the design's cost.
POST /v1/designs/{id}/retire ends builds and research from a design. Designs are never deleted.
POST /v1/designs/{id}/hand_over gives a design to a company in the same hands.

A prototype is a ship, station or facility built from an untrialled design, or a ship fitted with one. Its owner sees each changed number as a range.
POST /v1/fleet/ships/{id}/trial measures every untrialled design in the ship and its fittings, or one of the owner's gates in its system with gate_id. It burns fuel and wears the ship.
POST /v1/fleet/stations/{id}/trial measures the station's and its facilities' designs where they stand. It burns fuel from the hold, and the station does no other work meanwhile.
trial.done gives each design's true numbers. Later revisions start from them.

A locked blueprint lists in requires the numbers a trialled design of a kind or blueprint must reach. Each blueprint's codex page shows them.
Unlocks are checked when a trial finishes (blueprint.unlocked). GET /v1/designs/unlocks lists them.
Only designs the player researched count. An unlock cannot be handed over.
A locked blueprint cannot be built or researched (locked).

Another side sees a design only at the design step of its sensors, as ranges. See Combat.
Capturing a ship or station built from a design, or salvaging the last of its wreck, gives exact intel on it (design.learned). GET /v1/designs/intel lists that intel.
Research with the design_id of a design known by intel reverse engineers it: a new lineage at revision 1, starting from its true numbers. The original's owner keeps theirs.
POST /v1/fleet/stations/{id}/print, at a station with a lab, turns data cores into copies of an owned design. A copy, copy:<design_id>, is an item that trades like any other.
A build using a copy consumes it, and works even for a locked blueprint or a retired design. A copy cannot be researched or trialled.

A relic of the builders in a station's hold goes into its idle labs with POST /v1/fleet/stations/{id}/study. When the study ends, its blueprint is unlocked for the player (blueprint.unlocked).
The builders' blueprints stay locked to everyone else.