Smuggling and ship prints

Hey guys, I had thought about this for a while now, and decided to post it up.

My main curiousity is, “Why do ship prints get labeled as clan only, and you not be able to hold them?”
I realized that this is taking away from a smuggler/slicer/espi type character, since they can break into a base, but what are they going to do with the prints? If they sell them to anyone, that person can’t hold them, then the smuggler gets a bad rep.

I think that is would be nice to have a smuggling feat that would allow for the smugglers to take off the tag of clan only, or to lay them themselves. This would prove to be fairly useful, since smugglers would then be hired by companies to go get the other companies ships, and smugglers would actually have shit to do other than play around stealing ships all the time, trying to sell them.

Had some feedback on ooc that suggested it was a good idea, though I just wanted to leave it here for anyone who wasn’t online/in ooc.

Feel free to discuss!

It’s actually nearly impossible to break into a base and steal prints, they are programmed to prevent it. It’s been like that as long as I can remember.

Also the trend lately has been to not include clan only IDing on blueprints (at the clan’s request) because it makes it easier to have other clans build the frame

I think there should be a way for espionage to steal blueprints from a clan and make a knockoff version of it, perhaps with a slight quota penalty. That way even when a clan folds, some version of the ships that they used to carry can still be purchased in-game.