So, I have created something, what it is is not relevant. However, I need multiple ones of this object. Copy/Pasting is the simple answer, and is simple. But then, for example, Material becomes Material.001, Material.002 and so on and so forth. How do I copy/paste but keep the source Material exactly the same, so that I can edit all of the objects at once? Do I just have to change it all over manually?
As far as i know,copying a mesh that already has a material will carry the material source over to the new object.
You need linked datablocks. If you’re duplicating by shift-D that creates a new copy. Alt-D creates a linked duplicate. If you only want to link the material and no other part of the object (not the mesh, for instance, you can shift-D to duplicate, then use ctrl-L to make links for the material only. Select the target object, then shift-select the source (the object with the material you want to link), then ctrl-L>Materials.
User Preferences > Editing > Duplicate data: materials, [ ] set off and you have same materials when duplicating objects.
Yes…but beware that doing it that way will make this behavior global to all future duplications in any new file, so make sure that you want that to be your new default behavior and not just something you need some of the time.