Are Backpacks the Cargo Meta?

[XenoCow]

--- The Situation ---
From watching the moon landing stream, and then a bit on another one I noticed that bolting filled backpacks seems to the optimal way of transporting anything. They take up very little room and can store things much larger then themselves. What then are the purposes of the cargo crate or cargo lock frame outside of holding irregular items?

I worry that once real trade begins and being a cargo ship becomes valuable, those ships will be little sticks covered in backpacks. Alternatively, they could look like normal ships with the walls lined with backpacks in case of pirates (interesting, but maybe not as fun for everybody if pirates tear your ship to pieces every time and they attack every ship thinking it might be carrying cargo). Although I understand that players need to be able to carry things around with them. It seems that these backpack make all forms of cargo holding for basic (non assembled) parts pointless.

--- Question to Developers ---
How are you going to address this backpack meta?

--- Personal Ideas on the Situation ---
I think that backpacks should be useful tools for carrying stuff around. However, I think that limiting them to small items, ammunition, frame brackets, tools, and maybe some of the smaller components might make shipping a more interesting challenge.

I think that having limited backpack cargo space will make for more interesting engineering solutions. Small forklift like ships might become common just for carrying around pallets of beams or plates. A Pincer or Vasama Vanette might already be able to fill this role.

 

[MrFaul]

You do realize that you need to access those packs manually don't you?
They are not part of a cargo system.

 

[CalenLoki]

You do realize that you need to access those packs manually don't you?
They are not part of a cargo system.

That's very minor inconvenience compared to benefits. Especially for longer trips, where loading/unloading becomes much smaller part of the whole process.

Also, everything except ores need to be accessed manually anyway AFAIK.

 

[Recatek]

I wouldn't worry about this yet. There are plenty of ways to deal with it (limiting backpack content, or bolting a backpack destroys/damages its contents, etc.). They're a placeholder for now until we get proper inventory storage on ships, like weapon and tool racks. They've shown various parts handling just that, they just aren't implemented this early in the alpha. Inventory is one of the fresher parts of the game.

Personally I would remove the large slot in backpacks and just say that in order to pick up a large object and carry it around (something you need to do for ship building and repairs), it needs to occupy the backpack slot.

 

[XenoCow]

You do realize that you need to access those packs manually don't you?
They are not part of a cargo system.

Yes, I fully realize that. I've watched every official Starbase video at least 3 times (way more for the feature and trailer videos) and read every page on the wiki.

Please provide imput on the subject rather than criticizing my knowledge on it.

 

[MrFaul]

Well fair enough, that was rather poor attempt to imply the same as Recatek.
Apologies for that.

 

[Quinc]

I am a bit surprised that works at all TBH. The problem with developing a game like this is that players come up with strange but unbalanced methods like this. Balance is going to be difficult. Personally I don't think backpacks should work at all when detached from the player. When switching back packs the inventory should stay with the player endoskeleton and not the back pack, items that don't fit get dropped. Alternatively, similar to Recatek's suggestion, make it so that any back pack that is bolted drops it's contents into the immediate environment. Playing Space Engineers I kept think that building sufficient storage space is part of the challenge of designing a ship and yet running out of back pack space is extremely annoying as it means more time moving items from one window to another.

 

[XenoCow]

I don't think backpacks should work at all when detached from the player. When switching back packs the inventory should stay with the player endoskeleton and not the back pack, items that don't fit get dropped.

That's an interesting idea. There is even some precedence for this. The Ore crates work off of power but can lose their items when disconnected from that power.

Perhaps a compromise could be made. Maybe backpacks could have an internal battery that can support the storage compression for a limited time when not attached to an endo.

The only way to abuse this for cargo hauling would involve picking up and and putting on all one's "cargo packs" to recharge them along the voyage. Hopefully this would be inconvenient enough for it to not be profitable, although possible.