Cargo and weight limit

[Didow]

Hey guys.,

So I run my own server and just updated everything. Now in game I'm over capacity in inventory. How does the new cargo system work? Can I turn it off? Or alter weight limits?

If I can carry very little weight building my very large ship becomes very tedious.... what am I doing wrong here?

 

[kupu]

Hey guys.,

So I run my own server and just updated everything. Now in game I'm over capacity in inventory. How does the new cargo system work? Can I turn it off? Or alter weight limits?

If I can carry very little weight building my very large ship becomes very tedious.... what am I doing wrong here?

Hey Didow, lets try break down some of the basic cargo features;

Can i remove the new Cargo Mechanic?

No. Cargo is a pre-requisite mechanic for future features.

How does cargo work?

Storage no longer has a static amount of inventory slots, only a maximum volume capacity. You are able to expand the volume capacity of a Storage block by linking "Cargo Space" to it using the C + V link method.

As you fill the Storage with more items, the cargo space will dynamically "fill up" and represent the occupied volume.

How can i build large structures with this small volume limit?

You are able to define a cargo group as "Personal Cargo". You can assign a cargo group as Personal Cargo by pressing R on the storage block, and hitting the "Use as Personal Cargo" button. Then in your personal inventory, hit the "cargo" button.

You can expand the personal cargo volume limit in the same way, by linking more Cargo Space to the Storage block.

Is there a range on the Personal Cargo?

Yes there is. It is not infinite, the final range is still being balanced i think.

How do i craft these new cargo blocks?

Cargo Space is crafted in the Basic Factory. The recipe is 2 Alloy Mesh and 2 Crystal Composite.
Storage is also crafted in the Basic Factory and now requires 10 Alloy Mesh and 10 Crystal Composite.

How do i remove the slow move speed?

By loading your currently over burdened inventory into a new cargo group.

Can i move Cargo between different entities? (Ship to Station, or Ship to Ship?)

Yes you can. Link the Storage block on each entity to their respective docking blocks. Activate the "Auto Storage Pull" to transfer. Note: this won't work if both sender and recipient storage blocks have auto pull active at the same time.

Can i alter the weight limits?

Technically, yes you could. However it is not advised due to poor consistency when transferring blueprints / community content from server to server. The mass / volume variables are found in the block editor.

If it helps, here is a quick video overview of the new system. It also answers a few more questions about the transition period to new Cargo features and how overloaded inventory slots will be reduced over time.


Hopefully that helps a little bit with the transition to new cargo mechanics.

 

[SolidSebass]

Honestly I feel like this update was just a really bad idea and a move toward a negative direction for the game. A step toward realism became a step away from creative freedom. And I personally feel that a voxel should be a little more on the creative side than realistic one. Maybe it could have been a good idea but there was definitely a better way to do it. Now I just feel as if I will never be able to make a big ship again. 20000 blocks is not actually that many when you are trying to build ships bigger than 1 mil mass. Before when I could fit all my supplies and materials neatly into 9 chests it was sweet simple. Now we need to have like and extra 1000 spaces just for cargo. And once that fills up the ship won't be able to move. I really would love a rework or removal of this new mechanic, but that's just how it is from my perspective. Let me know if there are any redeeming factors that I have overlooked. And hopefully the community and developers can continue to work together to make Starmade as good a game as possible.

 

[Lecic]

Honestly I feel like this update was just a really bad idea and a move toward a negative direction for the game. A step toward realism became a step away from creative freedom. And I personally feel that a voxel should be a little more on the creative side than realistic one. Maybe it could have been a good idea but there was definitely a better way to do it. Now I just feel as if I will never be able to make a big ship again. 20000 blocks is not actually that many when you are trying to build ships bigger than 1 mil mass. Before when I could fit all my supplies and materials neatly into 9 chests it was sweet simple. Now we need to have like and extra 1000 spaces just for cargo. And once that fills up the ship won't be able to move. I really would love a rework or removal of this new mechanic, but that's just how it is from my perspective. Let me know if there are any redeeming factors that I have overlooked. And hopefully the
community and developers can continue to work together to make Starmade as good a game as possible.

How does this take away from your creative freedom? There's nothing stopping you from building your ships in a shipyard, or in SP creative mode.

 

[Edymnion]

You can still easily make super large ships.

You can make them in the shipyard (the preferred option), or you can make them floating in open space near your station by linking a storage block as your personal storage (long as its in the same sector) and have essentially unlimited personal storage as you remotely draw from it. And yes, this does require you to redesign ships. It means you will need to give miners more thrust to be able to carry the extra cargo when they're full, and it means you'll likely have to start building actual cargo ships and freighters to move your stuff around.

The limited personal inventory space was my biggest concern, in that I thought it was going to make building a station damned near impossible, but the linked cargo storage takes care of that pretty easily.

Sure, its extra limitations, but they're the good kind of limitations that will foster new kinds of building and interesting new mechanics to get around, as opposed to just having hard caps on things.

I like it, and am actually pretty excited about throwing everything in the scrap heap and starting over on everything.

 

[Master_Artificer]

When everyone is screaming and saying the values are too low at 100, but you feel like everything would be better at 10...

 

[Mr.Steam]

When everyone is screaming and saying the values are too low at 100, but you feel like everything would be better at 10...

I agree. Right now a 50 x 50 x 50 storage box is:

volume: 125,000 cubic meters
mass storage: 12,500,000
average number of blocks held (at .1 mass per block): 125,000,000

If you need much more space than that maybe you should consider using or dumping some stuff.

PS: If my numbers are wrong please correct me.

 

[Master_Artificer]

well, we have that amount in each of the ores and shards and mesh/crystals right now, for each color.

we just havent filled cargo spaces cause it would crash

 

[Mr.Steam]

Sound like you need to spend more time building and less time mining.

 

[Lecic]

Sound like you need to spend more time building and less time mining.

We'll stop mining so much when you don't need such big ships to survive.

 

[StormWing0]

Sound like you need to spend more time building and less time mining.

Easier said than done when you need tons of blocks to build with. XD

We'll stop mining so much when you don't need such big ships to survive.

Hopefully the devs will get around to doing something about this issue of bigger ship being needed to live. Maybe fleets will solve the issue somewhat.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Okay, ThrynBase needed 31 Million volume space.

Not bad actually, not bad.

 

[nightrune]

I like it, and am actually pretty excited about throwing everything in the scrap heap and starting over on everything.

I'm liking it as well. Its actually quite hard to build a decent cargo ship I'm finding. I don't quite understand the scale needed yet. Mainly because I want to have cargo shuttles to the ground on planets.
[DOUBLEPOST=1449443052,1449442785][/DOUBLEPOST]Another point is that in stations I'm just sticking the storage space everywhere I can as an overflow effect. That way if I suddenly get a big amount of stuff it becomes cluttered! It just feels more alive to suddenly have little cargo boxes everywhere after you mine or move stuff. Its a great visual feedback, and cargo vessels are gonna look great after the community gets time to really build them up.

 

[Master_Artificer]

Some peoples Storage:

Thryn Storage:

6:42 PM - Lecic: it looks like a massive pile of compressed trash on top of our base Arti
6:42 PM - keptick: How the F...
6:42 PM - keptick: Wha

Well I filled up the central spire more or less for the factory storage, so I had to branch out.
That's the storage of our ores and shards. Opposite of this picture is the Mesh and Crystal Storage, something that my computer refuses to load for a picture. Loaded most of this one though, but you can see chunks missing.
I will leave the storage of our built blocks to someone else though, I am done placing cargo areas. :V

 

[Edymnion]

Sound like you need to spend more time building and less time mining.

There are currently only two things you can do in this game. Build and mine. I don't think "Stop playing half the game" is a very good answer.

 

[Mr.Steam]

I don't think "Stop playing half the game" is a very good answer.

I never suggested that. I prefer to mine for a while then build for a while, that way you don't NEED to store so much material at one time. But that is just my play style.

 

[Master_Artificer]

We need to store that much material so we can spawn in ships!

The problem is you cant dock ships to stations without creating a lag monster. Which is dumb.

 

[Lancake]

We can easily adjust the balance on cargo, at this moment it's been set to a low-ish number since it's better to buff it later than nerf it. The latter would be paired with item loss once chests/factories/shipyards start dropping items once they go over capacity...

Don't worry though, normally it should be impossible to go over capacity by hand, only things like losing cargo spaces (either by removing them in build-mode or combat) would cause that. So if you're going to lose items, it's probably going to be during battle.

Since the cargo system is new, for the next 2 weeks most capacity limits will be disabled (you can go over it without the game stopping you) so you can prepare for the eventual total conversion. This also means that the feedback you're going to give now is going to matter the most. So please let us now if the chosen values are too low or too high from your point of view. We don't want a full RP system for the vanilla config, but storing an entire radius 250 planet in the space of 5^3 cube is silly too.

In my opinion, cargo ships/salvagers should be 100% devoted to hauling cargo, so if it only has 5% of its space used by cargo spaces for what it has to do, it's not using the correct config values.

I think 30-40% would be fine, and the rest should be power + thrust (+ shields and some turrets) to move the extra mass added by the full volume.

 

[Mr.Steam]

We need to store that much material so we can spawn in ships!

Correct me if I am wrong as I have not tried it in game yet, but if you add blocks to a blueprint don't they disappear from you inventory? If so you could add a few blocks at a time and not need to have all blocks up front.

 

[StormWing0]

Correct me if I am wrong as I have not tried it in game yet, but if you add blocks to a blueprint don't they disappear from you inventory? If so you could add a few blocks at a time and not need to have all blocks up front.

Ever try building a ship bigger than 20m across? You'll need at least as many blocks as it takes to totally fill the build areas you have set. Can't tell you how annoying it is to place blocks only to run out at the same time and watch the game stop halfway.