Feedback/Suggestion: Cargo Crates as Fluid Containers

[Recatek]

Now that cargo crates inherit the weight of their contents, I'd like to discuss the fact that manipulating the contents of large cargo ships is very tedious, to the point of causing my hands to hurt if I do it manually without macros. From asking around I know many people do use macros, and I feel like telling people to "just install autohotkey" is the wrong place to be here.

Currently, ship ore inventory works something like this:

You have one stack (up to 1728kv, or 12*12*12) per each cargo crate in the network attached to the resource bridge. For large ships (200-400 crates, or more), this can be very tedious to work with -- loading, unloading, and now, rebalancing. Especially without a clear understanding of which inventory box corresponds to which crate on the ship. Crates can be prioritized for auto-loading, but that can't help much when it comes to interacting with the system manually.

I'd like to suggest instead treating network-connected crates as fluid containers:

Each ore in the crate network has its 1728 stack size removed, and instead stacks up to the combined total capacity of the connected crates. For weight, the ore is evenly distributed between the the connected crates, and so they all have the same weight automatically (just like cargo lock frames currently do). This would not only help with assessing how full your ship is at a glance, it would save screen space in scrolling, and could save a lot of otherwise unnecessary clicking and dragging.

What happens when a crate is destroyed?
Since the fluid distribution places an equal proportion of the ore into each crate, that proportion is lost/leaked when the crate is destroyed. In the example above, a single crate destruction would destroy/leak 576 Onium, 576 Xhalium, and 485 (rounding up) Arkanium. For finer grained control, a ship designer could manually create and control networks to distribute different ores in different places, but that would be an opt-in feature for advanced players, rather than something everyone has to contend with as it is currently.

What about moving ore out of the ship? Doesn't this affect stack sizes?
Ship to Station: Ideally, station inventory for ore could have its stack size limit removed or greatly expanded, so there's less dragging required to unload a ship into storage. Otherwise, this wouldn't really affect selling other than having fewer lines of ore appear on the the market panel (and less clicking/macroing).
Ship to World: A single material cube in the world remains at 1728kv. Dragging from ship inventory to the world would take 1728kv worth of the ore in that stack, create a cube of it, and leave the rest in the ship. To create multiple cubes requires multiple drags still, though with slightly less hunting and scrolling.

 

[[QS] Combustible]

YES! This is a great solution.

 

[Kap]

Very good idea. I really hope this or something similar is implemented.

In regards to what should happen when a crate is destroyed:
I think if you have multiple materials in your crate network, it should just leak/destroy one at random, if you have enough materials in the network for a full 1728Kv stack. Otherwise you'd probably end up with 300 ore cubes instead of 100, should you dismantle 100 ore crates systematically one by one.

It is a little bit silly though (And expensive with calculations), that ore would be constantly shuffling itself around inside the crates, to distribute their mass, every time you add or take from the network.

Whatever is done to the ore crates, I'll say this. At least four solutions exists to storing ore cubes on your ship, and crates are the easiest one by far. They need an upkeep cost of at least electricity.

 

[CalenLoki]

I like the idea.

IMO grouping crates for finer control should be done on the building level: all crates that are connected by touching each other would share inventory. So typical ship would still have several groups, but at least not hundreds.
Each group should accept single ore type IMO, so there are pros and cons of grouping them.

Alternatively we could use yolol fields for crates, so it can auto-balance cargo (based on thruster output). Something simle like:
Cargo limit (0-100%)
Current cargo (0-100%, read only)
Stored resource (string, read only)

Then you just need to name your crates with number and letter each, based on their position (low numbers - left, high numbers - right, ect.) and dynamically set cargo limits to keep the ship balanced.
Or set cargo limit to 0 for all the crates and squeeze them out of the ship into station inventory.
It could be used for sorting ore: if :StoredResource=="Bastium" then :CargoLimit=0
That would also allow steering by shifting cargo placement.

With addition of component that can spawn ore cubes into the game world you could also eject unwanted ores.

 

[Recatek]

My one concern with doing it via YOLOL is that already renaming a few dozen thrusters for the MFC/FCU is a major pain point. I can only imagine having to do so as well for another 200-400 cargo crates.

 

[CalenLoki]

That's a call for "rename this data-field for all selected objects" QOL feature. It's needed anyway.
Or even "rename and add numbers" so you just select all manoeuvring thrusters and type "M" then click a button and the game names all of them "M1", "M2", "M3", ect.

 

[Vexus]

I almost feel the point of making the cargo crates have weight based on their contents is to make sure you balance your load correctly - or install enough powerful-enough thrusters to maintain balance no matter your load, increasing your fuel cost. I do however agree when it comes time to sell, the actual icon and numerical indicator should be one-per-material type to cut down on UI-interaction.

I think the addition of 'liquid storage' mechanics that can also be used to enable load balancing is possible and a good solution especially if it is combined with an electrical cost to maintain the constant balancing state across boxes. Things like this probably need to be a toggle, or option for players, and not a full switch from what exists. Ore cargo crates are currently pre-bolted cubes of material onto your ship. Not much else except that, and nothing wrong with it. It's simple and makes sense. I feel it's much better to let players learn to balance their ships regardless of load, increasing cost, slowing speed and so on - a trade off for being able to make such large hauls.

Load balancing is one of the most important aspects of shipping, followed by fuel cost. I feel if you add more thrusters to balance and test for even the most off-balance load setup and can show your ship flies straight even with the most awkward balance, then you don't have to worry about it and will have an edge when it comes to selling your ship design. Of course, if the request is to be able to obtain 100mil credits just by traveling from point A to point B then yeah, make it easy. I'm excited to see what modifications one would make to improve balance.

Have you tested if you can manually add on parts to a ship which makes it bigger than the SSC bounding box? Add a bunch of triangle thrusters and call it a day.

With better displays and more YOLOL options, I don't hate the idea of using a YOLOL system if the boxes had fields to manipulate. It would mean it's a hard to solve problem that is different for each ship design in general. This means people who get good at designing those kinds of shipping container ships would be sought after for their expertise. As far as naming thrusters; it only has to be done once. Same with large cargo ships; yes it might be 200, but the same can be said about a ship with 250 thrusters. Naming them is part of the current balance of going through the hassle producing such a ship; not really worth it - but maybe worth it for cargo crates, and again, only has to be done 'once'.

When it comes to renaming and appending sequential data onto the end of a group of files/objects, that would be great. Maybe they can sell the method to Microsoft.

 

[mrchip]

I'm very late but... please, yes.
This is also good for ship balance. Don't have to worry about "all the heavy rocks decided to sit on one side of the ship, so it can't fly straight anymore". Even in terms of calculation efficiency. The game just has to calculate the center of mass of the ship itself, and the center of mass of the crates alone, then blend between the two based on cargo weight to get the final center of mass.

 

[ChaosRifle]

I want to say this is how inventory V2 is meant to work, but I can't remember my source.. I sure hope it is.

As for crate destruction, just equally load the crates.. so every crate has the same loot - 5% basti, 20% charo, etc.

 

[mrchip]

Isn't inventory v2 physical? Im not sure, i havent kept up to date