I am happy for my PCs to make or hack aces to plans. Some stuf will be hard to find but for the most part I don’t see much point in restrincting access for the vast majority of items. I might tell somebody that designing the new gun will take 1000 man hours, or the space superiority fighter 20000 man hours, I figure the quality of sim has improved enough that it will perform in sim as it does in the real world, and if they want to rent high speed simulspace to save real time, fine by me. If they want to fork heavily, that’s fine too, just check for the stress of merging. I know it is probably a bit short but it makes for a more enjoyable game and nobody can really say how much design tools have improved, I would rather ear on the side of fun where the future is so unpredictable. Hell when I did my training as a computer programmer you had to write code for every little thing, I did a course in SAS programming recently. It has a GUI everything can simply be selected threw menus and wizards. You don’t even need to look at the code for 80% of the tasks. The tools for application development have improved productivity by at least 20 fold. if I need to restrict something’s availability I will make it hard to make, slow to make or require hard to get materials.

The problem is that the anarchists do have grenades, some very good ones. And they do original R&D. and suggesting that every possible grenade configuration has been patented implies a level of stagnation that actually greatly increases the horror of the setting “there is no new thought”. And really is eclipse phase about DRM, thorough the books it admits that DRM is broken within months for most new products (not that getting the pirate copy from the cracking cartels is much cheaper) Naturally an unlimited number of grenades with the abilities you can get for expensive could have an adverse impact on the game but there are better ways to limit availability. First I am assuming he is operating in corp space otherwise legal repercussions would have no weight. So cornucopia machines don’t exactly grow on trees. This expensive grenade will probably need a full cornucopia machine, not just a faber. Weapons are restricted in corporate space so every cornucopia machine will report any attempts to produce grenades (of any power) to whatever passes for authorities, and probably not make your grenade till it checks your weapons licence. Of cause if you hack the machine you can suppress that while having it work with blueprints that are not approved (this is not the same as the DRM on the blueprint, many cornucopia machines will not use unapproved third party blueprints even if there is no patent or copy write issue) . a modest time hacking can get you around all of this. The next problem of cause is time. Cornucopia machines don’t necessarily sit idle in unattended rooms. Making an expensive item takes several hours. And a typical desktop cornucopia machine could only make one at a time, larger industrial units wouldn’t work any faster, they would just be able to make several items in parallel. So you’re going to need to have unrestricted access to the cornucopia machine for hours at a minimum and the better part of a day if you want lots of grenades. This will require ether significant outlay of funds (to rent probably from criminals) or some heavy hacking and social engineering (to access a corporate model or acquire your own when private ownership is not permitted). Next there is raw materials. We are in the habit of thinking of a grenade as a metal container, filled with explosives with a detonator. Probably could be built entirely from Fe, O,N,C,H all easily available in the inner system. But that would be a cheap grenade and expensive grenade will include sensors and a smart material case, and probably more processing power than the computer I am typing this on. I couldn’t say exactly without knowing what model of grenade he wanted to make but chances are it includes some element that is not cheap and easy to find. Combining money and rep might be able to solve this however in some places the materials will be simply unavailable, there may be an inferior substitute (lower the grenades stats in some way) or there may not. So things you need Programming: nanofabrication Infosec perseption Networking: criminals (or corporate) Some social skills G-Rep (or C-Rep) A significant investment of time and effort. A risk of being traced or discovered (don’t over use) A possibility of local unavailability (don’t over use) So after taking all those your large supply of expensive grenades can hardly be called free.