Implemented New Cargo System!

[CoolDog3]

Probably similar to the SD-BB missiles and the SD-KB missiles. Slowly removed.

Ya but they can't just disappear can they? And what would happen to everything that's in them?

 

[Megacrafter127]

Ya but they can't just disappear can they? And what would happen to everything that's in them?

First step would be that people can take stuff out of them, but not place anything back into them.
The second one would be to prevent this block from being placed, but still enable players to pick it up.
The third step would be to remove it with all content, that was left in it.

However, I doubt that plexstorages are going to be removed. It is more likely to be turned into into whatever new cargo block there is, if there is going to be an entire new system and not just limits imposed on the current one.

 

[FlyingDebris]

I like it.

However, I recommend changing the yellow outline to orange so as to not confuse it with the Adv.Build box.

 

[starhaiden]

There is a way to store things very tightly with gravity. I think the crates should store 5 per block but if it has a gravity block in the middle it should be able to store 50 blocks. also you should be able to get a black hole gravity generator that can store 100000 blocks but you can't make this block with the normal crafting system you have to find some rare alien technology to make it. it should be hard and dangerous to make the black hole with this technology

 

[ltmauve]

There's no reason to remove the plexstorages. They do need to have limited capacity added, however (which should be added when this does.)

 

[Creeper__God]

+∞
I love this idea. It would give my massive freighter a use (and give me a reason to finish it). For size reference the freighter in question is the one that you can see in my signiture, which carries 24 101x51x51 containers.

 

[Achriel]

I really like this idea. It give cargo moving a reason to exist. I have a few refinements to offer/consider:

• Use Plex Storage as the 'interface' to a cargo area, same way we link a computer to the modules in a weapon. You put things into it via the plex storage box but the contents 'occupy' the defined cargo area and the plex storage is defined by that area (how much volume/mass can be stored there.
• The defined cargo areas, if damaged, destroy cargo in the same ratio. So if 50% of your cargo area is destroyed by a weapon then 50% of the cargo is destroyed. This mean you cannot 'overload' the cargo area (more stored than it can hold) and you should protect your hold from damage. Cargo could be as tough as hardened hull
• Specialized storage. Like we modify weapons we can make more efficient cargo areas for certain types (ore, refined good, ship components, etc.). Same idea as we do weapons but the bonus is only applicable to the correct storage but still allow normal cargo capacity to other cargo types.
• There would need to be a way to load/unload cargo from a central point (not just the Plex Box) so the removable cargo modules idea could work. The module has the area & Plex storage that is docked to the ship (or left behind) but can be loaded without having to travel to each plex to put things in.

Again, great idea, would love to see it implemented.

 

[starhaiden]

there will be something the people you can hire at the shop can do, transport cargo from one place to another or you could make ship to do it with logic but then it won't be able to fight well.

 

[Gerion]

Love the idea.

A few bonus suggestions?

1. Cargo transfer should just go over the basic docking module instead of any fancy way. Its probably easier to implement that way and the infrastructure required is most likely already in place. Maybe with some blocks that increase loading/offloading speed for dedicated cargo stations?
2. Give the Bobby AI module the ability to set up a cargo route, the option to wait with the transport until its cargo hold is filled to a certain degree and the option to only load specific cargo. And theability for me to automatically jettison certain things (red dirt, anyone? Havent found a recipe that uses it yet)

Example scenario: I am mining asteroids. My ship has a cargo hold, which fills up quickly (nom nom asteroids). Now i could fly back to the factions main factory, but that is inefficent. So I attach two freighters to my ship and tell them to fill their cargo hold with materials, the smaller one taking minerals, the bigger one the generic blocks. And instead of flying back to the factions main factory, which (because of asteroids being further away) is quite a ways off, i have them set to go to a refining facility my faction set up close by to keep ways short and the harvesters going.

So what we have in the paragraph above is: A reason to set up frontier outposts with manufacturing capacities, a reason to switch turrets for freighters on salvage ships, a way to not have this system interrupt cracking asteroids as long as you do not get too far away from your factions territory and the opportunity to bring a bit more life to the game by having AI controlled freighters fly all over the place.

3. If a cargo block is hit by a weapon and destroyed, its gone, with all its content. That way, someone out to get the cargo needs to put a bit more effort into it (destroy thrusters and turrets, hit the core without hitting the cargo bay with anything big) and not to bring the big death star that cleaves the freighter in half without leaving cargo, while someone out to just cripple your faction blasts away without remorse, which is ok as far as I am concerned.

4. The limitation should just be an item count. 1000 a block was a number floating around somewhere, I would go lower to 500, but thats personal preference. Why just item count? Because then we have a clear efficency list on what to transport with freighters and what is just too inefficent to haul around and store for a long time/in big quantities and again, easier to implement than some evil calculation of doom.

The efficency list, you ask? Here, let me help you.

The least efficent thing to haul around and store with this would be capsules. You get 10 per mineral block, meaning that for one cargo block full of minerals you get ten cargo blocks of capsules. Pretty inefficent, huh? Better make them into something useful quick.

The next two are minerals and intermediate products (metal mesh, for example). You need a lot of minerals for one finished product and unfinished products require that the material to make them into the thing you want (often capsules) are already in place or are being hauled to the factory. Not as inefficent, and in the case of the minerals actually needed, but still not good.

And with what do we fill our cargo bays? With finished products of course. One missile barrel is what? One hundert capsules? Thats the stuff we are transporting and storing efficently. And that makes those freighters and storage/factory stations actually interesting for pirates and rival factions: They are filled with shiny finished stuff and if they take it, they dont have to worry about all the logistics around it. Especially with the addition of a drydock sort of mechanic, this will be a major point for factions: Take freighters, kill freighters, stop freighters. Everything that can stop that titan in the drydock from being finished.

And the last thing is totally optional:
A beacon block and a beacon reciever block. What do those do? Simple, the reciever goes to your station, the beacon itself to your ship. Then you align the beacon with the reciever.
The reciever can be interacted with and shows 3 categories.
First is the list of aligned ships. All you get there is that the beacon tells the reciever "I exist and I am on this ship".
The second one is a list of destroyed/deactivated beacons, with the ship name it was on and the time stamp when it stopped existing.
And the third one is for still active aligned beacons on ships that switched factions (IE captured freighters). Here it tells the name of the ship and, more importantly, which faction the ship now belongs to.

The above could help keep an eye on your factions ships, replace losses according to demand and catch some pirate/rival factions if they do not find the beacon on your ship. Aligned beacons are undetectable without visual identification, as in: You will have to dig through the ship or study its blueprint before being able to just take it home and integrate it into your fleet. Or you just blow a lot of holes into the ship and hope to hit the right place.

 

[NeonSturm]

I've got a very neat idea now:
Cargo Boxes:

Cargo in Plex-Stores scales not only with Plex-Stores but also with mass of the ship EXAMPLE:

• cargoCapacity = Math.min( ship.block[plexStore].length * 300, ship.mass * 50 )

The next time it's accessed or before when you add a block, it re-calculates and loses cargo equal to currentCargo - currentCapacity

The core has to be on top on this ship type, or you may not be able to access it / dock it centred​

You have a Plex-Controller on a ship to make this ship a cargo-box. (Similar to a bobby)

• Plex-Controller limit the type and amount of items stored in their area/territory{0l: {type: sum/all, limit: x}, 1: {type: a, limit: b}, ... }

On your main ship, a Plex-Controller can link to any number of cargo-ship docks

• if docked has a controller, inherit item count{0: {type: inherit/all, limit: inherited}, 1: {type: a+a, limit: b+b}, ...}
• If linked it does not store in your ship, but in cargo-boxes (docked ships with controllers)

Transporting cargo boxes = draining on them if the other ship can fill.
Transporting cargo boxes type2 = flying this ship to another ship.

 

[Izikiel]

And here I was thinking this thread had died. Just goes to show how good an idea it is, I guess.

 

[Aridhol]

Oooh, I'm gonna chime in on this to give it a bump too...

Fantastic idea, really adds a lot of fun to the game imo..

My thoughts on scaling? Maybe go 1:100 instead of 1:1000? So you'd be able to haul pretty decent amounts but not TOO incredible without an awesome hauler...

Regardless, some form of cargo bay additions would be FANTASTIC!

Just think! You Salvage Cannons directly feed into this cargo bay! Solves that problem people have been wanting for a long long time at the same time!!! Wooooo

+1+1+1+1+1 !!!

 

[Gerion]

I added another concept to my post, just something tangentially related that crossed my mind when I thought what a mess it would be to keep track of your factions automated and private ships.

 

[Atheddall]

Some may call this necro-posting, but I feel that it has been long enough that we, not just the developers but the community as well, spend some time to discuss this is further detail. It has been quite a few months and I believe this idea still need to be considered and with the release of the new prefixes I would like to what the devs have to say if there had been any progress or time put into these thoughts we had so long ago. If indeed nobody is interested in this idea seeing the light of day anymore, then I have no doubt this thread will again creep into the shadows.

 

[Achriel]

I still think cargo storage should be linked to a 'defined' space/volume outside player storage (only because player storage changes would be terribly inconvenient). Not sure what the devs have planned but I would like to see ships affected by the mass/volume of the cargo they carry as cargo. A simply example of this being an entire planet can be harvested in only a few storage modules and this seems an incongruity with a physics based universe.

 

[Ithirahad]

Yeah, we certainly do still need a balanced cargo system. I suppose that it isn't the highest priority, but I still hope to see it soonish™.

 

[jayman38]

I remember reading that the devs liked the idea, so they are kicking it around. It'll probably be a bullet point as a secondary change on some random update any day now. It might need to involve a new block, to keep from breaking existing designs and causing most captain's cargo to eject into space. From what I have gathered, since the devs truly want to keep about 256 IDs free for custom/player-made blocks, and the upper limit is 1024 blocks, there appears to be room for less than 100 new blocks now.

 

[CaptainTaz]

With a cargo system limiting the amount of blocks you can hold, you also have to have a large enough cap that you don't have to go back-and-forth between ships just to fill in a 20x20x50 area of your ship with systems. Cargo could balance storage, sure, but we have to think about building too.

 

[Lecic]

I remember reading that the devs liked the idea, so they are kicking it around. It'll probably be a bullet point as a secondary change on some random update any day now. It might need to involve a new block, to keep from breaking existing designs and causing most captain's cargo to eject into space. From what I have gathered, since the devs truly want to keep about 256 IDs free for custom/player-made blocks, and the upper limit is 1024 blocks, there appears to be room for less than 100 new blocks now.

Did the math, and there are currently 661 occupied IDs (might be some unfilled between 1 and 661, but I didn't check), which gives us 363 unoccupied IDs, or 113 left for non-modding purposes.

With a cargo system limiting the amount of blocks you can hold, you also have to have a large enough cap that you don't have to go back-and-forth between ships just to fill in a 20x20x50 area of your ship with systems. Cargo could balance storage, sure, but we have to think about building too.

Considering how most building is done in creative/with admin powers and then spawned in via blueprint in survival, I don't think this would be much of an issue anyway.

I'm pretty sure that Shipyards will allow the player to draw blocks from storage on the station to build.

 

[CaptainTaz]

Considering how most building is done in creative/with admin powers and then spawned in via blueprint in survival, I don't think this would be much of an issue anyway.

I'm going to have to object to you on that one.

Some servers do not allow imported blueprints for certain reasons (Overpowered buildings, Easy-spawn titans, stolen ships from other servers, etc.) So this would cripple anyone who wanted to play on these kinds of servers, or anyone who just wants to build legitimately in survival, where it is more satisfying.