I have no idea why!
Yes I suppose you could do that, but it's likely a lot more work than just a few lines. Still like you said, why put it in the patch notes..
Nah, it's not lot more work .. even tho I'm not a "from scratch programmer", I understand everything about programming. I recognize almost all programming languages (C, C++, lua, python, java, css, html, php, batch, mysql ..etc). Drawing a basic menu would literally take 1 minute for experienced developer.
If I had access to ED's source code, I could just copy-paste another menu and then modify it. Or well first modify the original menu and add extra line or column where you can click "pin blueprint".
I think best place for that, would be when you visit the on-foot engineer and open the menu and click on "I want to modify my suits / weapons". Once that new menu opens, on right side below your weapon stats somewhere, add one extra line between there saying "pin blueprint"
Now once you have at least one pinned blueprint, every on-foot engineer you visit, would now have extra option on first menu "I want to use pinned blueprints" or make it more realistic and write "I want to use 3rd party designs (pinned blueprints)"
Once you click on that, you will then have new menu with all of your pinned blueprints.
After the menus are complete, you need to add some basic code behind it, something that checks IF you have pinned blueprints, IF yes = show pinned blueprints, IF NOT = hide the menu.
It really is THAT easy. I don't know what programming language ED devs use, but all programming languages have same idea, they have arguements, switches ..etc that checks if something exists or not, then based on the values it brings back from the database / save / file (wherever it takes them from), it will then take next step. You can have multiple options and switches ..etc.
My only problem with programming, is that I don't know specific syntaxes and other stuff to be able to write my own programs, but if i had the motivation (which I don't), I could easily learn all that by googling.
I've done mostly lua when working on things that are not allowed to be mentioned on this forum and every time I have some syntax errors, I just google and usually find solution within 5 mins.
If you ask me, the problem with devs is lack of motivation. I'm surely not only person to suffer from severe lack of motivation when it comes to getting things done. I think devs have just lost interest and only do this as "must do job" and they're not having fun developing the game anymore, you can tell by the way they are doing things.
In case you don't know, I'm a rather small youtuber, but I still get fair amount of requests from other devs to showcase their game on my channel. Over past 7+ years I have noticed that smaller devs are motivated and work on things almost instantly! I've reviewed some smaller (1-5 dev team) games and they fix and add things within 24h from reporting them.
There's been lot of smaller games where devs directly reply to my email and talk it thru, they ask my opinion how do I think it should be ..etc. They clearly show that they are motivated and interested in fixing things .. but you can quite clearly see that ED devs are not very interested in their game anymore.
Sure Frontier is much bigger company than 5 devs (I assume), but that should only mean that they get things done faster, not slower.
But instead almost every big company just doesn't care. Take GTA 5 for example, online is still broken and ineffective .. there are 3rd party multiplayer mods that work better than the original, they made 1 BILLION in just 3 days from launch on consoles .. and they can't fix multiplayer :/
Also PlanetSide2 by Sony, I used to play it a lot, but after they merged servers and my save became corrupt and I wasn't able to unlock new stuff as game thought my base weapon / vehicle is still locked, I gave up on it after I had reported it like 3-4 times over 12-14 months and still no fix..