If you can have replacement Fighters, I think it would be great if you could apply a similar mechanic to SRVs. The fighters are as I understand it basically assembled from a prefabricated flatpack that was loaded into the ship. Well, if you can flatpack a space fighter you should be able to flatpack a dune buggy. Love to see this happen at some point. Maybe if it was a feature of class 5 baysor larger, there would be a point to larger SRV bays.
The SLF are intended to be true glass cannons.
If we would not be able to produce them on board their use would become troublesome very quickly.
Personally I feel FD made the right decision here.
There is of course a consistency problem with the 3d print mechanic as we cannot print SRV's.
This is something FD should address rather sooner than later.
I can foresee a good use of the 3d print mechanic for example when FPS gets introduced.
We might buy weapon blueprints and produce them ourselves. Such a blueprint would of course be much more expensive than just buying a weapon.
We would be able to store multiple blueprints in our ship library and we could then choose the right personal weapons when we go on a sortie.
I also think we should not be able to print SLF for free. There should be a choice in the game to either buy an actual SLF, or buy a much more expensive blueprint. A blue print might cost a few million.
Only when we own the blueprint of a particular SLF version we should be able to reproduce them in our ships.
Every type of bay (SLF bay, Limpet Drone bay (if FDev plans to add this), SRV bay) might have 3 blueprint slots.
This would force us to make a choice of what to install. I think having to make choices is a good thing in a game.
As indicated I would like to see this mechanic used for SRV too and also for different types of Limpet drones.
If FD thinks this mechanic through then they could have an awesome tool for us cmdrs in the game.
The way they currently implemented 3d printing is a bit lackluster.
To me it seems as if they do not see the cool flexible gameplay possibilities this mechanic has to offer.