Proposal: Streamline Inventory Control

[MacThule]

SUMMARY

The current system for player inventory control is tedious, difficult to organize, arbitrary-seeming, and sometimes exasperating; filtering, sorting, dumping, juggling stacking, un-stacking, transferring... This could be vastly improved with a change that employs mostly existing features to seriously streamline inventory control. Shifting from container-based to menu-accessible, module-based inventory with limits resulting from a function of mass could drastically improve speed and ease of building by allowing players to more easily access a variety of materials and components. It could slash the tedium of organizing a single set of possessions through several containers and labeling those. It could allow limitations to inventory sizes based on something relevant, realistic and already extant in the game engine, rather than based on an arbitrary number of slots and/or numerical stack limits. Finally it would enhance the realism of harvesting, crafting, shipping, escorting, storage and the entire player economy. All this can be accomplished through a relatively simple shift that relies primarily on extant game features.


DISCLAIMERS

I have nothing but respect to the work that has gone into the existing inventory system – it has provided a functional initial interface for handling inventory well enough that the game can be enjoyed.


Also, some research into existing threads has contributed substantially to this proposal and I have no desire to claim credit for the ideas of others - anyone desiring recognition for a point in my proposal please feel free to reply a link to the thread showing your preeminence.


I'm not going to post the list of reasons that the inventory system as it stands calls loudly for improvement. There have been other threads on the topic of complaints about it and proposed solutions (some aspects of which have bee incorporated into this proposal). If you fundamentally disagree that the existing system should be streamlined and believe that it is perfect as-is, or something along these lines, this proposal is not meant as an insult to your beliefs, just a statement of mine.


PROPOSED SOLUTION

1. Allow the player inventory enough slots for every item type in the game (use pages if necessary).
   
   
2. Limit player inventory capacity to a maximum total inventory mass (the same mass figure already calculated for every structure and ship based on block counts) of, say, 1K (specific amount is very open to discussion).
   
   
3. Scrap storage containers. Get rid of them completely – they max out at 100 flowers and shrubs or 50,000,000 plates of industrial armor depending on the day. They're basically "treasure chests" that work rather poorly in a world where people use millions of resource to build mega-structures.
   
   
4. Implement two new blocks with a "computer-module" or "module-enhancer" type relationship to each other; the Cargo Bay (controller) and the Cargo Hold (module/enhancer) (naming convention is very open to discussion, obviously).
   
   
5. Create an inventory in the database for every installed Cargo Bay, an inventory also bearing a mass limit (100, 1K, whatever) that benefits from a linear increase in capacity for every linked Cargo Hold), and a way for the owner to set permissions (permissions is something I don't have a lot of thoughts on except that there are probably a dozen ways it could work effectively, but I'm sure the community has some excellent ideas for details implementing Cargo Hold permissions).
   
   
6. Create two new tabs on the "Shop" window in the GUI. *( this was my initial solution to GUI implementation that seemed straightforward, but see FURTHER THOUGHTS below)
   
   1. One tab interfaces with the Cargo Bays on whatever Ship Core or Build Block a player is "inside of."
      
      
   2. The other tab interfaces with the Cargo Bays on whatever structure (ship, station, planet) the player's ship may be docked to via Docking Module.
      
      
   3. Additional installed Cargo Bays on a respective structure may be selected by a drop-down on the appropriate tab.
      
7. Recalculate the mass value of a placed Cargo Bay module as the total mass value of its contents, for purposes of thrust, collision, etc.
   
   
8. If a Cargo Hold stack is partially destroyed, a percentage (equal to the percentage of that stack which was destroyed) of every stack in the Cargo Bay it belongs to could be either deleted or turned to scrap (open to discussion). If the Cargo Bay module (controller) itself is destroyed, then the inventory sheet is not accessible until a new Cargo Bay is linked to those modules, which then transfer any and all remaining inventory to the new Cargo Bay inventory.
   1. This may be a serious issue, as linking 10,000 enhancer modules to a controller without deleting many and re-placing them in the process would negatively impact player blood pressure... Also the one-by-one linkages would probably wreak havoc on related item stacks. Alternative approaches to handling destruction of cargo holds would have to be solicited and considered at length.

EXPECTED RESULTS

1. Management of all storage beyond a player's personal inventory would be streamlined into a single window. This would save time spent managing inventory, visiting containers for components, and building intricate pull-filter webs that have to be re-built every time the infrastructure is modified – all essentially clerical activities required to get to the actual meat of building, harvesting, fighting, trading, etc. It would possibly increase the need for time spent doing in-game activities such as hauling and escorting.
   
   
2. Building would be streamlined. Builders wouldn't have to interrupt big projects to dig through containers, which would speed building and improve accessibility of building.
   
   
3. Trade and mining would require bulk haulers. Factions couldn't so easily strip-mine entire systems in a day and even if they could they would have to take the time to haul it all off and construct massive storage facilities to secure their booty.
   
   
4. Docks would have more purpose than holding ships still and linking power grids.
   
   
5. Secure private/personal storage beyond astronaut inventory capacity could still be available through secondary Cargo Bays with different permissions.
   

FURTHER THOUGHTS

*It may be preferable instead of adding tabs to the Shop window, to elaborate on the tree-style interface the shop uses, adding other cargo facilities at the top level of the tree. Tree-sorted inventory would make inventory management very similar to Eve, which seems to appeal to a large portion of the player base.

In the future salvage systems, refinery systems and factory systems could be slaved to Cargo Bays for auto-pull/auto-dump and could even grant specialized capacity bonuses when systems approach a 1:1 ratio as with weapons. So a well-planned, well-built Cargo Bay completely integrated with all other relevant on-board systems could store 2x, 5x, 10x or whatever of many items types, further rewarding good builders.

Eventually various materials and components could be assigned variable masses.

Eventually Cargo Bays could be linked to Shop Modules to auto-stock at certain levels, or shop modules could link directly to Cargo Bays and directly use the materials and capacity of that bay.

I realize in proof-reading this that streamlining to a menu-based inventory control (whether tab-structured or tree-structured) could technically be separated from implementing mass as a factor in inventory and storage and that this may seem desirable. I believe though that to streamline inventory management without implementing any further restriction at the same time would allow players to simply walk around with an inventory holding millions of every item and would thereby actually take some of the fun out of the game rather than enhance it, as these two things in combination would do.

 

[kupu]

Oh yea, it could be streamlined and hopefully will continue to be improved over time, however i have a few serious concerns about your proposal.

Allow the player inventory enough slots for every item type in the game (use pages if necessary).

Oh crap! A spider! Now what page is my handgun on... 23? 14? *respawn*

More importantly...
658 Current ID's being used or reserved for use in the immediate future. More planned.
256 ID's given to custom server blocks.

We use a 5x7 grid showing 64px size icons (a required default for best fits at lowest resolutions) to display our inventory. Implementing pages to display every block like this would result in 26 pages as a minimum.

"Then generate them dynamically or use a directory system like the shop?"

Generating an extra page once exceeding a pages threshold will destroy any semblance of organisation or order to the page system making it difficult to navigate in a consistent manner. (It might also disrupt the search function unless everything is loaded at once...? Not sure)

Using a shop directory would make it incredibly difficult to take stock at a glance or quickly move items to the hotbar for building or using weapons, helmets etc etc.

Limit player inventory capacity to a maximum total inventory mass (the same mass figure already calculated for every structure and ship based on block counts) of, say, 1K (specific amount is very open to discussion).

This and Advanced Build Mode don't really work very well in conjunction with each other. Players will hold millions of mass in blocks in their inventory to work on stations / titans. The current inventory + multi slots allows most players to hold an entire ship palette without limiting the size of their build or interrupting the build flow. Given that Schema has always pushed for scalability within the engine and seeing the players constantly pushing the boundaries of large ship builds... this mass cap seems like a hugely limiting factor and adds a tedious ritual of slowly space walking to get more Hull blocks from a cargo bay.

Scrap storage containers. Get rid of them completely – they max out at 100 flowers and shrubs or 50,000,000 plates of industrial armor depending on the day. They're basically "treasure chests" that work rather poorly in a world where people use millions of resource to build mega-structures

They actually work beautifully in a world where people use millions of resources to build mega structures because there is no stack limit. The very nature of your mass limit opposes mega structure building.
As for the shrub problem, just filter all flora and dirts to another storage block. Infinite stacks, you only need 1 flora box.

Implement two new blocks with a "computer-module" or "module-enhancer" type relationship to each other; the Cargo Bay (controller) and the Cargo Hold (module/enhancer) (naming convention is very open to discussion, obviously).

So, this part of things is pretty interesting. I actually quite like the idea of having a cargo hold, limiting a 20 block ship from carrying an entire planet. I get why people keep bringing this one up.

However it also defies or conflicts everything i just stated in my objections to your player inventory proposals. You can't have both infinite stacks on a player inventory yet restrict mass on cargo holds... it makes no sense and players would just become pack mules.

Forgive me for not addressing every point, but i think the first concerns i had prevented rebutting every subsequent point (despite them being interesting!)

Personally, i kinda always thought PVE interactions should give reason to avoid flying a small ship with expensive cargo. Carrying enough blocks worth to be a billionaire? Chance of pirate raider warp in increases dramatically!

 

[ltmauve]

But, if in 2 mass worth of blocks you can store infinite amounts of stuff, there's not reason to build a dedicated hauler, or storage facilites, or anything else along those lines.
Yeah, having infinite personal inventory and finite inventory blocks just wouldn't work. Anyway, I'd love to see finite inventories because it would give us more stuff to work on, and make the game into a bit more of a survival-type. Though I expect putting "-1" as the value in the config puts it back to creative mode (infinite stack)

Scrap storage containers. Get rid of them completely – they max out at 100 flowers and shrubs or 50,000,000 plates of industrial armor depending on the day. They're basically "treasure chests" that work rather poorly in a world where people use millions of resource to build mega-structures.

They work perfectly well. I don't know what you mean by this.

They actually work beautifully in a world where people use millions of resources to build mega structures because there is no stack limit. The very nature of your mass limit opposes mega structure building.

Yeah. Perhaps the ability to expand your inventory while in a structure with a "work area" or just pulling off a normal cargo area?

 

[CyberTao]

You know, players can just place a shop on a station, and then use that shop as storage, yes? Shops can hold 'infinite' and can be accessed while building either ships in a shipyard, or building the station itself, and can be restricted so that only the faction may use them. Risk is that everything gets destroyed when the module gets destroyed, but with the new shop GUI, it really is the convenient thing if you can ensure it's protection.

I don't mind limited mass, it's why some of us have made cargo ships/pods, so that would be interesting to some of us (with option for 'infinite' as well). Not sure if you really need to removed storage to add cargo modules, couldn't you just make storage connect to increase limit?

 

[kupu]

I don't mind limited mass, it's why some of us have made cargo ships/pods, so that would be interesting to some of us (with option for 'infinite' as well). Not sure if you really need to removed storage to add cargo modules, couldn't you just make storage connect to increase limit?

Yea, i can see the appeal of it.
However I worry the limitless player inventory and limited mass cargo on ships will make each other redundant to a point.

Limiting the player inventory to a max mass (for whatever reason) would probably be the most infuriating micro management thing i can think of for Starmade. (Nor should they have to workaround the mechanic by making a shop where they may be...)
It's not like The Elder Scrolls where you have to either eat 20 wheels of cheese or pick and choose your loot... It's just a point blank limit to one of the core game mechanics. Building big *anythings*.

 

[CyberTao]

Yea, i can see the appeal of it.
However I worry the limitless player inventory and limited mass cargo on ships will make each other redundant to a point.

Limiting the player inventory to a max mass (for whatever reason) would probably be the most infuriating micro management thing i can think of for Starmade.
It's not like The Elder Scrolls where you have to either eat 20 wheels of cheese or pick and choose your loot... It's just a point blank limit to one of the core game mechanics. Building big *anythings*.

Not everyone just wants to build however, I for one like logistics, so flying a trade run in an armed cargo ship actually interests me more than a patrol in a battleship (or building sometimes, depends on the mood). It's really more something that would be nice to have as an option, especially for RP servers.

Leave it unlimited by default and let servers adjust it if they wish. Set the limit to something reasonable (taking in account Build box dimensions) and it could work fine.

 

[MacThule]

Thanks for reading my thoughts!

Oh crap! A spider! Now what page is my handgun on... 23? 14? *respawn*

As opposed to current system of "Oh crap! A Spider! Now let me walk over to the container that has my handgun (handy label tells me which one!), access it, drag it into my.... *respawn*"? I mean, really - I assume that if you expected to encounter spiders you would keep your gun handy, just as you would in the current system you would have to

More importantly...
658 Current ID's being used or reserved for use in the immediate future. More planned.
256 ID's given to custom server blocks.

We use a 5x7 grid showing 64px size icons (a required default for best fits at lowest resolutions) to display our inventory. Implementing pages to display every block like this would result in 26 pages as a minimum.

"Then generate them dynamically or use a directory system like the shop?"

Generating an extra page once exceeding a pages threshold will destroy any semblance of organisation or order to the page system making it difficult to navigate in a consistent manner. (It might also disrupt the search function unless everything is loaded at once...? Not sure)

Using a shop directory would make it incredibly difficult to take stock at a glance or quickly move items to the hotbar for building or using weapons, helmets etc etc.

The current system already requires dynamic generation of additional pages to open storage slots beyond the 5x7 inventory grid.
By the player.
Manually.
By placing enough containers on a given ship, station or planet to accommodate item sets beyond the slot limits of that initial 5x7 page.

The database inventory is ALREADY organized into pages, but instead of being on a drop-down or a directory tree, each page is scattered in the pixel-verse, accessed only by walking our avatars to pointers that look like glowing boxes. So, navigate pages of inventory by walking around stacks of boxes instead of simply selecting a page from your inventory with a click on a drop-down? I fail to see the advantage. We label containers - they aren't just "3rd from the left, upper right corner" - why obstinately assume we wouldn't label pages "weapons, effects, advanced armor, etc"?? No, we label our containers and we would certainly label inventory pages, and allowing user-defined page names to appear as drop-down items is the height of ease.

Two clicks to switch from one labelled page to another in a drop-down is better than the current system of 1) closing your current page with R, directionally walking an avatar over to a labelled box in a visual array, and again pressing R, isn't it? Plus it saves players the absurd hassle of building their own inventory page arrays in the first place instead of simply being able to access inventory pages all in one.

I also don't believe organizing inventory in a directory tree would inherently make it any harder to take stock than it already is with inventory being organized into separate "containers" (i.e. pages of inventory) that have to be space-walked to, opened, closed, then the next "container" (i.e. page of inventory) space-walked to, opened, closed... At least navigating a directory doesn't require moving an avatar about. I found the directory tree to handle inventory in Eve to be quite convenient and easy to use.

This and Advanced Build Mode don't really work very well in conjunction with each other. Players will hold millions of mass in blocks in their inventory to work on stations / titans. The current inventory + multi slots allows most players to hold an entire ship palette without limiting the size of their build or interrupting the build flow. Given that Schema has always pushed for scalability within the engine and seeing the players constantly pushing the boundaries of large ship builds... this mass cap seems like a hugely limiting factor and adds a tedious ritual of slowly space walking to get more Hull blocks from a cargo bay.

They actually work beautifully in a world where people use millions of resources to build mega structures because there is no stack limit. The very nature of your mass limit opposes mega structure building.
As for the shrub problem, just filter all flora and dirts to another storage block. Infinite stacks, you only need 1 flora box.

Advanced build and massive build projects is something I should have addressed in my OP. Sorry - yeah, building only from a 1K stockpile would be absurd.

**6.5 Allow toolbar slots to directly fit items from a ship/station inventory for as long as the player has access to that inventory. If a player un-docks or leaves a build-block with stacks belonging to a cargo bay in his/her toolbar, those disappear back to where they live. (I assume that, code-side, this would require re-defining toolbar slots as pointers, rather than actual containers which are filled with values themselves. This should be fine though; it wouldn't reduce what an astronaut could hold if carry capacity was no longer based on the limits of a slot-grid ).​

So, this part of things is pretty interesting. I actually quite like the idea of having a cargo hold, limiting a 20 block ship from carrying an entire planet. I get why people keep bringing this one up.

However it also defies or conflicts everything i just stated in my objections to your player inventory proposals. You can't have both infinite stacks on a player inventory yet restrict mass on cargo holds... it makes no sense and players would just become pack mules.

Well consider my responses. I don't think it does conflict if we keep in mind that this is a game, in alpha - development stage - and that there is a creative solution to almost any problem. The cargo storage space limitation is desirable in and of itself, but may also facilitate (and necessitate) a streamlined inventory if thoughtfully implemented.

Forgive me for not addressing every point, but i think the first concerns i had prevented rebutting every subsequent point (despite them being interesting!)

No - thank you for responding to my points in a clear constructive manner! And I'm glad you liked at least some of what I proposed. Discussing the system in depth like this is the best way for the developers to hear from their alpha-testers

-

They work perfectly well. I don't know what you mean by this.

They do work. In that they aren't broken. But each container is nothing more than a page of inventory, except you can't access it without space-walking to it. That's a tedious way to manage inventory. That's all I meant by saying that containers don't work for handling large-scale storage

 

[ltmauve]

They do work. In that they aren't broken. But each container is nothing more than a page of inventory, except you can't access it without space-walking to it. That's a tedious way to manage inventory. That's all I meant by saying that containers don't work for handling large-scale storage

Ah. I haven't been able to play since the new update. Anyway, my point about storing mass is that is a valid point for finite inventory. If anyone can store an almost infinite number of any blocks in only 20 storage blocks, any ship can haul any cargo anywhere. The difference between a titan and a titan holding several system's worth of resources is those 20 blocks. If finite inventory is implemented, a ship will have to be big enough to store a system's worth of resources, and can't just be a combat titan.

 

[MacThule]

You know, players can just place a shop on a station, and then use that shop as storage, yes? Shops can hold 'infinite' and can be accessed while building either ships in a shipyard, or building the station itself, and can be restricted so that only the faction may use them. Risk is that everything gets destroyed when the module gets destroyed, but with the new shop GUI, it really is the convenient thing if you can ensure it's protection.

EXACTLY. That's exactly what I've been doing. That's exactly what everyone seems to be doing because it's WAY more convenient than running from container to container with our avatars.

Now examine that further though. Using a shop as extended inventory to bypass the hassle of containers is kind of a waste. Now you have a shared inventory CALLED a shop... but no shop. This is torpedoing the player economy and any opportunity for trade as well. So why not formalize using shop-style inventories as the de facto inventory management system? That's the core of my whole streamlining proposal!

Why force people to use shops as a work-around for a clunky inventory system and "pretend" that's what shops were intended for and that everyone really loves walking from container to container pressing R to open, R to close, etc ad nauseum when they clearly DON'T prefer that and will use any work-around they can come up with even if it means discarding an entire game feature like trade?

And again - exactly. The shop is exactly the model that I'm proposing to base the GUI of a streamlined inventory on. Why? Because everyone is already using it for that. Everyone prefers that to containers.

(OK, "everyone" is probably an exaggeration, but a very large proportion of people are anyway.)
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Ah. I haven't been able to play since the new update. Anyway, my point about storing mass is that is a valid point for finite inventory. If anyone can store an almost infinite number of any blocks in only 20 storage blocks, any ship can haul any cargo anywhere. The difference between a titan and a titan holding several system's worth of resources is those 20 blocks. If finite inventory is implemented, a ship will have to be big enough to store a system's worth of resources, and can't just be a combat titan.

Agreed! Under the current system a ship with a core, a power block, a single thruster and 2 containers can literally hold several entire planets (or, titans) and still flit about with perfect agility and speed like a delicate little butterfly.

By using a storage controller-module system with limited, but expandable, mass capacity as I propose, this nonsense would be instantly nerfed and it would also put a massive brake on things like stripping entire systems in a single day, which currently server admins have to actively monitor and regulate.

 

[Megacrafter127]

EXACTLY. That's exactly what I've been doing. That's exactly what everyone seems to be doing because it's WAY more convenient than running from container to container with our avatars.

You can open storages from within buildmode, you know…

 

[CyberTao]

I actually just use shops cause I'm on a build server with unlimited shops. Why bother storing stuff if you can get free infinite?
Back before I knew of infinite shops though, I just carried only what I needed for that stage of building. I can see the issue if you wanted to hold all the different kinds of blocks you'd need at once, but taking what you know you need at your current stage of building is how I do it, and will continue to do it, because I can't separate "interior" and "exterior details" if they use the same hull blocks. Would pretty much be exactly the same, flipping through tabs looking, in my case anyways (Reasons why I didn't like SE #4).

That was only when working on my shop though, when I worked on a station with factories, I just put storage blocks down around where I worked to hold stuff. Could probably hook up a few chests with "pull all" or something to bring all the materials you need to a storage near you.

Regardless, I'm one of those people who carry only what they would need, and storage everything I don't need when I think of it (I didn't have a system either, so junk everywhere). Really though, being able to rename plex storage and figuring out where they moved that dropdown list to (wasn't removed, right?) would have pretty much the same effect as tabs. If we ever do get a limit on mass we can hold, I imagine we'd get something along the lines of grouped storage/cargo.

 

[MacThule]

You can open storages from within buildmode, you know…

...of course? Is that not still running from container to container to open - and close - each page of inventory, only slightly quicker?

What is gained by forcing players to store their inventory in 10 different places and construct an elaborate schema to sort and organize those pages with the sole purpose of not needing to open every box to find a particular item because you know where it's been sorted to?

I know where everything is in the shop already! No filters, no sorting, no flying around looking at labels, I just know where it is. It's so convenient and I didn't even have to teach the shop how to organize the stuff. It's just there and I just use it. Fast. Simple. Streamlined. Now I can go mine, fight, trade, build, spy, etc.

Is forcing players to spend ANY time at all, ever building pull-filter systems to organize their inventory, or forcing them to fly around pressing several buttons to close page 3 of their inventory and open page 4 somehow enhancing gameplay?

 

[MacThule]

So I've discovered that servers can allow multiple overlapping shops. I guess that makes a sufficient work-around for inventory. Would be better if you could put a shop on a ship though

 

[MacThule]

Thank you for the new option to access named cargo containers from the core/build block, Dev Team!!

It helps a lot :-D

 

[Crimson-Artist]

Yea, i can see the appeal of it.
However I worry the limitless player inventory and limited mass cargo on ships will make each other redundant to a point.

Limiting the player inventory to a max mass (for whatever reason) would probably be the most infuriating micro management thing i can think of for Starmade. (Nor should they have to workaround the mechanic by making a shop where they may be...)
It's not like The Elder Scrolls where you have to either eat 20 wheels of cheese or pick and choose your loot... It's just a point blank limit to one of the core game mechanics. Building big *anythings*.

aren't we eventually going to have limited item stacks anyways? even with unlimited stacks it still takes up nearly my entire inventory to build a decent looking ship. hot swapping items will begin to get really annoying.

either way were going to have some kind of micro-managing with inventory space. The only way i can see this being made both fun and manageable is giving us the ability to access build mode of another ship while inside another. couple this with accessing cargo from inside the core and you effectively make constructor ships a thing.

 

[Valiant70]

Limiting the player inventory to a max mass (for whatever reason) would probably be the most infuriating micro management thing i can think of for Starmade.

Unfortunately I don't have time today to read the entirety of this thread, but here are my two cents worth:

• Allow build mode to pull blocks from a cargo system rather than player inventory.
• By implication, have a separate hotbar in build mode and astronaut mode.
• Build mode hotbar can equip stuff either from player inventory or an accessible cargo system.
• Allow pulling blocks from the station/ship that you're docked to, or from ships docked to whatever you're building.

This way, you can dock on a shipyard/factory base station and use the materials stored there to construct your ship, or you can get a little bit of a station started with the 10k blocks in your inventory, then dock a cargo shuttle to it to supply materials. This will allow personal inventory limitations without making megastructures a pain in the gluteus maximus. Honestly, the game is WEIRD when you can carry twenty planets in your pocket, so a good solution is desperately needed.

Oh yeah, and there also needs to be a way to move stuff between docked ships without having to put it in your inventory, because this system would be utterly horrific otherwise.
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The only way i can see this being made both fun and manageable is giving us the ability to access build mode of another ship while inside another. couple this with accessing cargo from inside the core and you effectively make constructor ships a thing.

I just noticed you had a similar idea to what I just wrote.