Cargo

[Dark Kodiak]

At the risk of starting another Manifesto thread, I'll just post this and see what shakes loose from the community.

Recently I started building a decent sized dedicated Cargo ship with a large volume of physical space in its hold. However, that got me to thinking about the current and potentially planned Storage mechanics.

As it stands, the Plex Storage system allows any ship to slap in a handful of Storage units and cram a completely unreasonable number of blocks into them, essentially allowing any ship of any size, from a single person fighter to Titan sized vessels, to transport an equivalent amount of material to an entire planet (or several). The freighter I'm building alone could achieve this simply by virtue of having a single storage unit per bunk (there are 21 bunks in the ship).

That's completely discounting the amount of physical space currently set aside for "Cargo".

I realize that the current Storage system is going to undergo some radical changes, and this thread is not to outline the current deficiencies with the existing system as is; those have already been thoroughly documented. Capping stack sizes seems to be one thing that keeps coming up again and again, and I completely agree with doing this. I personally have stacks numbering into the hundreds of thousands sitting in my personal inventory, which is admittedly handy if I happen to die or the server I'm playing on crashes and I log back in with my old ship nowhere in sight, but it isn't particularly challenging to be able to pull the equivalent of a small moon's worth of resources out of your pocket at a moment's notice.

This being said, I don't feel that simply putting a limit on stack size in both personal and Plex storage, thereby forcing builders to utilize more Storage units, is the complete answer when it comes to moving and storing goods around the universe.

I've done some digging around on this topic and come across a number of suggestions involving the handling and transferring of Cargo, so I'll endeavor to collate them here.

First off, as already stated, is being able to impose a hard cap on Stack size. As with all things, having this as a configurable variable in the Server config files would accommodate both free-build and survival servers and play styles, and I agree with this wholeheartedly. Personally I'd like to see a smaller limit to what can be carried about on your person compared to what can be crammed into a storage block, and that would be another nice variable to be able to set.

But what about those awesome, nice looking freighters and tankers I've seen running around? Just using a Plex Storage box to transport all that material, even with a stack cap, kind of defeats their purpose.

One idea that's been brought up is to simply have the material blocks transported in the ships at a 1:1 ratio. This is my personal favorite, and until I found a similar thread I was going to suggest it myself. There are several ideas associated with this.

Having the ability to designate a dedicated "Cargo" area on the ship then transferring material into it and being able to watch as the space physically fills up with those blocks would be both pretty awesome and particularly fulfilling for those who design ships with massive dedicated Cargo holds. I'd imagine you could achieve this through a combination of a mechanic similar to the current Docking system for designating the Cargo area along with however the upcoming Shipyard system is intended to work (IE: watching ships being built block by block as the resources are pulled from inventory). I won't pretend to know the specifics, and I have no idea how difficult this would be (especially as it's based on features that aren't even in the game at the moment) as I have no programming skill to speak of. It'd be a pretty cool feature though, especially if it could be combined with linked Salvage modules to dump mined material directly into the hold, or with a Cargo Transfer beam or a Cargo screen similar to the current Shop screen.

Barring that, the idea of simply using the current Docking mechanics already in game has been brought up, and docking resource cubes into your hold is a viable alternative if a bit of a timesink as they're basically blocks of deadweight attached to a ship core. On the upshot, there are already mechanics in place for adding the mass of docked vessels to the parent's total mass for Thrust purposes, so a fully loaded Cargo ship would handle exactly like it should: like a pregnant Space Walrus swimming in frozen molasses. Using a push/pull/stop cargo drone as a kind of manned zero-G forklift wouldn't be a bad way to move things around in the hold or to/from a storage facility, and could be fun from an RP perspective, however doing this solo would be a chore IMO. So, fun for some, maybe not for everybody.

Building on that concept is the idea of utilizing "pallets" of docked Plex Storage. Not a bad idea, especially combined with stack limiting to ensure you need more than a handful. Depending on the final stack sizes, and whether or not you could alter that cap in the server config, this could be a good middle ground.

Alternatively, there's the option of just cramming the blocks into your hold in Build mode. Again, adds to Mass, has the bonus of being solidly attached to the ship so it's not just hovering off the deck, and it's fairly easy to move stuff from build mode to current inventory and then sell it off to a Shop at a profit. Combined with Stack limits this would be the easiest way to do a basic cargo transaction as the blocks would need to be physically transported instead of put into the current limbo that is storage but it's lacking in the polished gameplay mechanic department.

One thing that storage boils down to for me, even with a stack cap, has to do with the fact that you're essentially putting hundreds 1 meter cubed chunks of material into a 1 meter cube. With the current focus of not being able to have blocks pop in out of thin air this seems to be somewhat against the design direction the devs are pushing for. How do the blocks get in there? Are they scanned and digitally disassembled to be stored as data? Is it a black hole in a box? Gateway to another dimension? Pocket universe maybe?

One way or the other, it suggests is that Plex storage should use Power, however it achieves the effect of storing the blocks, the same as any other system on a ship. Given the benefits of putting stuff into a storage box, I'd suggest it would be a hefty amount but not overly debilitating. Make the Plex storage units expensive to produce and maintain (through power usage) and there's suddenly a reason for ships with large holds. Starting players who want to play the trading game can go for the 1:1 block option for transporting cargo until they've earned enough money or gathered enough resources to buy/build/otherwise acquire and maintain condensed storage units. Starting trade stations and shipyards would be able to maintain large physical warehouses of materials, which could be ideal targets for piracy, and as players/factions grow in wealth they can afford to build and maintain large quantities of condensed storage units on those stations.

I'll open up the floor from here. I'd really like to hear what everyone's thoughts are on how to handle Cargo. YMMV, of course, and any and all options discussed should ideally be changeable in Server configs to suit people's tastes.

 

[Gristle]

Nice post. Some interesting ideas here. I would like to RP the trader more and your thoughts hit the mark for me. I'll have to ponder some of your suggestions more before I address them.

 

[молоток]

I would like an option for "stack size" in server config. Again, don't MAKE every server conform, but have it as an RP option. I am still waiting for a minecraft server willing to make stack size "1" so that nothing stacks with anything. I would also crack up at the idea of "stack" style storage systems, (FiLo) such that only the last item put in the box can be retrieved at a time. Of course, I would also play a minecraft mod that ONLY let you use the hot bar: no inventory at all. I think these things need to be customizable at the server level.

 

[Viridis00]

I would really like some sort of actual use for a physical cargo hold that takes up real space to give ships more specialized roles. Surprisingly though, how that would work is kind of hard to think of with the usual thoughts around voxel games—

It's kind of hard to even say how it could work in tandem with our docking system since docking itself is getting an overhaul of sorts in the near future. I think *maybe* a flexible type of storage system could work with a combo of the ideas in the OP.

• The current storage containers are capped off at a certain block limit and now have 5 slots. For a proportion, let's say 50 blocks per slot (hull armor retains the groupings (50 block, 50 wedge, etc. in one slot)). OR Storage units are now only for things like weapons and helmets.
  
• New blocks are needed. Cargo Controllers and Cargo modules work like a combo of docking modules and storage. They need to be placed as a bare minimum of a 3d shape's frame with the cargo controller connected to them like any other subsystem in the game.
• Each 1m^3 space inside of the frame is treated as a storage slot that can store items stacked to 10000.
• Each slot is represented physically in the game as one block as the one type of block in that slot. (blocks with stacks are just represented as one type of block)
  
• A UI similar to the galaxy map is used to manage a cargo controller's 3d space.
• If the frame is broken, items scatter as floating blocks as if they were dropped by a player.

With that kind of system you can have volumetric fixed storage bays on a ship, or use them on a separate entity (armor surrounding them to make a "crate" and dock them. I think this was roughly what you were trying to say with what you mentioned about pallets, right?

I don't know, I'm sure the idea itself won't work in some way, specifically the numbers I presented and space efficiency in regards to the usual storage containers. I'd like to hear more on this subject too because I think that making freighters and such a viable game play mechanic instead of just a RP thing is pretty awesome.

 

[Jaaskinal]

My idea for this sort of thing is just that the blocks have mass. That way a builder is not constrained at all, stations can store whatever you need, but that transporting large amounts of blocks is actually quite difficult.

 

[ToyotaSupra]

TBH if they impose a hard cap, I'm gonna have to download a mod or something, even in creative I easily use tens of thousands of hull blocks. The devs have focused on gigantism (intentionally or not) so if they impose hardcap to 64 blocks or even 10'000 blocks max? Nope. Not ever going to work at all.

 

[AtraUnam]

Rather than making a cargo hold required for existing materials why not add some new materials that require storage tanks, specifically liquids. We could have several liquids such as water and oil which could each have their own use from laser coolant to increase fire rate to oil which could be used in a generator to make a temporary power boost. The point would be that each liquid would have an irreplaceable and valuable but unnecessary use. Making them only transportable by physical tankers would give cargo vessels a use.

 

[молоток]

I think that the Devs are slowly approaching a system wherein you "PLAN" a ship, using whatever blocks you like, but then you have to actually buy or make the blocks. The ship is built (not by you) in the shipyard. Maybe.

 

[EricBlank]

My idea for this sort of thing is just that the blocks have mass. That way a builder is not constrained at all, stations can store whatever you need, but that transporting large amounts of blocks is actually quite difficult.

I particularly like this idea: turn plex storqge units into a machine that compresses space within itself to store as much as you want, but all that mass is still there and adds to the mass of your ship, so sufficient thrust must be applied to move it efficiently. Freighters using plex storage might not use all that space for storing the blocks, but for thrusters. Give them an energy drain as well (or they dump their load after a period, but not immediately), and they become something that needs to be thought about before being employed en-masse on whatever ship you feel like. The absolute maximum amount of mass one unit can store can also be a variable and exceeding that amount requires additional power. (Or is impossible)

Storage bays as described could then be used to store goods without the energy requirement, and for cheap while still being easier to store and remove than storing via building directly to the ship, but the materials stored still end up affecting the thrust/mass ratio and now take up 1m^3 of space apiece.

The game needs a sandbox build-mode that allows us to design whatever we want to without need for credits/blocks though, so we can more quickly design exactly the ship we want and save it as a blueprint without running back and forth between where we stored our stuff and the ship we want to build because our inventory can't hold everything we need to build it. That sounds much better than how it works now. :P