(Note: I say Planetside because I assume that the spaceship will already have a very nice storage system or something, and storage will be more of an issue on the planets). Okay, In Terraria, I had about 500 different items and about 50 stacks of dirt, stone, and sand that wouldn't quick stack. And after every expedition, I had to spend like 5 minutes going to all the 20-item chests to store my loot. Quick stack helped sometimes, but once the original stack of say, Bombs, was full, then I had to manually put it in a new stack in the chest, after checking to see if quick stack had worked. While it wasn't much of a hassle to do a couple times, after every expedition it got a little discouraging, leading to me dumping my crap in a nearby chest, to be sorted "later." In Starbound, can we have a bank or some larger chest? Or how about if you have a chest open, the scroll wheel will switch to opening the chest next to it? And you have some sort of "clear-inventory" thing that quick-stacks each chest in the row? Maybe something like a "deposit box." You put an item in it, and it is sent to the Ship/Base automagically. Maybe it has to be on the Base or above ground with clear skies to work. I don't know, I just know that in Terraria storage was a bit of a pain at times. Other ideas? (Of course since this is in space, the chests will probably be futuristic versions, so cross-storage might work?) If you want to see more suggestions, read in this thread, or click the links! If you have more suggestions, post them! Other storage related suggestions Pneumatic Tubes, Computerized chests, Robotic Arms, Constructors, Oh My! Computers
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I'd like some pneumatic tubes, computerized chests, robotic arms, constructors, deconstructors, and similar features. Pneumatic tubes would allow you to throw items (either by actually throwing them, or by opening up the tube's inventory) into them where they get whisked away to nearby chests. Normally the tube would just shove it into the nearest chest and call it done. With a computerized chest, you'd put items into extra slots at the top of the chest, and the chest only allows those specific items into the chest, this way you can open your inventory, use a "dump everything" button on one chest and know that you're not going to lose your stack of unobtanium in your chest dedicated to dirt. Robotic arms are capable of interacting with any objects that are near them. They'd be mounted on a bar and be able to scroll across them. They're programmable with LUA (Which I believe was announced) as well as able to take some instructions by default. With them, you could press a button to instruct an arm to take an item or stacks of items out of a chest, and put it in a pneumatic tube, where it will be whisked off to you. For the very endgame stuff, you have constructors and deconstructors. As their names suggest they construct and take apart items. Constructors will allow you to select a craftable item, and upon receiving the proper materials it will automatically spit out the item that you selected. With this, you can make massive amounts of specific items in a very short time. Chaining them together can result in a full supply chain that will pump out any item. Perhaps you could have constructors tell other constructors what materials it needs to construct for the item the player wants, and those constructors inform robotic arms, which pull the raw materials out of your chests. Deconstructors are the opposite of constructors. Give it any item and it'll take it apart into its components. A crafted weapon might be deconstructed into circuits, batteries and all the other things involved in a gun, those could be placed into the deconstructor again (Or if you need it faster, then other deconstructors) which will turn the batteries into metal and acid, which could then be placed in a chest, ready for constructors to construct them into something completely new. If it's needed, deconstructors might not be 100% efficient at deconstructing things that can't be deconstructed by the player, and there's a 5% chance that certain items are lost during deconstruction. Hmm. . . I think i'm going to make a new thread about mechanical inventory managment.
This idea (LINK Here) is not fleshed out very well, but I think that you guys are all on the right track. I would love some type of computer inventory system that will automatically store and register and organize items. At that link it also mentions using the computer to craft things, so you dont have to actually have it in your personal inventory. That would be AWESOME to say the least.
I like the pneumatic tubes idea! How exactly would these be placed/connected to chests? I also really like the computerized chest. One thing I might change though, instead of extra slots, wouldn't it be easier just to have the items already in the chest act as a filter? Like, if there is dirt and snow in the chest, placed manually, then when you hit "deposit all" or when items come in from the pneumatic tubes, only dirt and snow are placed in the chest. Oh! That brings another possible issue we could look at with pneumatic tubes. What exactly should happen if an item goes into a pneumatic tube, but it doesn't have an output, or the output is a filtered chest that won't accept the item? Now, Robotic arms I'm not liking as much. I believe Lua scripting was mainly meant for people making campaigns and the like. And while I guess it could be used for other things, I think an important thing for game design is to not make features inaccessible to some players. For instance, I might want a robot arm that gets me health potions from my chests, but I don't know Lua. It would need a doofus-friendly interface. Also, why exactly would I need a robot arm to drop things in a tube for me? I keep trying to think of reasons this would be useful, but it seems like the pneumatic tubes and chests themselves already take care of the functionality of the arm. The other 2 of your suggestions don't really have to do with storage, so I'll post about them in your thread, which I'll link to here: http://community.playstarbound.com/index.php?threads/pneumatic-tubes-computerized-chests-robotic-arms-constructors-oh-my.25585/ Because people interested in better storage still might be interested in your other automato ideas. These questions aren't meant to be antagonizing, by the way. They're to show things for your consideration, to draw forth details and improve the concept.
I'm thinking that tubes would interface with chests simply by being next to them, unless the tube is "locked" or a transport tube, which means that it will only connect to other tubes, this would allow for more compact machines as your creations get more complex. If it's needed, tubes might also be able to be painted, and would only interface with chests painted the same color, and interact with tubes painted the same color unless it's a special tube that will allow it to connect with a different-colored tube/chest. But that would only be useful for those of us who are truly insane. Hmm, that's a good idea, have items already in the chest act as a filter, that'd probably be the default mode for the computerized chests. Another mode might be useful for situations like the last item in the chest gets removed, special slots would be less easily removed, perhaps they're not even actual items (to save your valuable ones that you only have a few of.) Or if you have items that you know you're going to get at some point, but don't have yet and are expecting to have in the near future, then the secondary mode would be quite handy. If a pneumatic tube ends then it will usually be dropped onto the ground at the end point. But there are ways to be clever about it, and instead of dropping the item, you could send it back to the beginning with a loop or have a twist that "bounces" the item back the other direction. This would mean that you could have an infinite storage tube if it's not limited, which would be lagalicious, so perhaps tubes solve this by having a certain "pressure" as in a number of items that a tube block could have in it at any one time, and if that pressure's exceeded, then the tube bursts, throwing its contents every which way? Robotic Arms are used to take items from chests and other containers (Including the player) when they're not actively thrown into them. (De)constructors would drop their items, meaning that the tube on its output side would retrieve it, but chests have no such motor, so they'll need a robotic arm to retrieve it. As for a UI, you'd have an item selector much like a computerized chest or constructor has, with a pulse from wiring, it'd go and retrieve the items, and deposit them at its "home," the location where it rests at, where there could be a pneumatic tube or a chest that the items go in. Perhaps you could set it to retrieve any items in a container except for selected ones, so that when the player walks past it it will take all the dirt, ores, bones, zombie flesh and other useless miscellany from your inventory and deposit them into a tube that leads to your chests.
Yesssssssss. I loved making these things back in Tekkit because storing things is such a hassle otherwise. This absolutely needs to be ingame in some way.
@Taylor, Gentleraptor Thanks you guys! I'm happy to have your support. @Pseudoboss Hmm. What if something is laid out like (chest)(tube)(chest), would it just connect to both chests? Not that that would be a problem, just making sure you account for that. This painting system seems a little unintuitive. I think the paint was not supposed to impact function. And shouldn't there be something simpler than special "non-connecting" pipe blocks? I like in the starbound demo video (here) how they implemented the new wiring system (Around 54s in), with item nodes instead of physical placement of wire. The more like things that are already in the game, the better chance of the idea being implemented AND the better chance the Player would understand. This would be good for pneumatic tubes, except that pneumatic tubes have an obvious reason to be required as physically placed blocks, not just an abstract connection. I can't quite figure out how to resolve this difference, but if you could, that would be great. If you can't, we should try to find some other way to keep pipes that shouldn't connect from connecting. If we can't figure THAT out, then I guess paint will have to do. Oh yeah, I wasn't thinking about if the player removed the last item. Oh, but maybe something like not-actual "shadow" items! Maybe when you remove the last of a specific type of item from a chest, it leaves a "shadow." This looks like a faded, transparent copy of the item removed. It acts as a filter when left in the chest, a placeholder maybe. If you take it out of the chest it disappears, or if maybe you just have to click it. The downside to this is that the placeholder would have to take up an actual item slot. The plus side is that you don't really have to modify the UI already in place. Perhaps if you make the placeholder disappear when a chest needs to fill another location (I.E., when a chest is full + a placeholder, an actual item would replace the placeholder.) I dunno. What do you think? Having items actually held in the tube is good. Maybe if you side-click the input point, it shows a small inventory area where it shows the items blocking up the tube. If this inventory is full (maybe about 4 items?) the pipe stops suctioning. Once a spot opens up, the pipe places the item into an available chest. Infinity storage is kinda besides the point of having the suction tubes, and having the thing explode also seems like a bad idea. Personally. Ah! That sounds better. Having a robot arm take my items and deposit them in the appropriate chests. Maybe just wire them up to a computer chest, or just build it on top of a chest, and it uses the filters already in place to decide which items to hunt for? If the chest is empty, or if it is not a filtered chest, the arm will just grab any items laying around. That being said, it sounds more like an alternative to pneumatic pipes than a complement to them. The pneumatic tubes would be able to suck up the items coming out of your (De)Constructors anyways wouldn't they? Then just place it in a chest from the pipe. Or maybe you're suggesting the pipes wouldn't actually connect to chests! Oh, wait, I think I've been confused about how these pipes work. I figured they would be like Minecrat "hoppers," able to place items directly into chests, placing them in whichever chests are available. But I think you're saying that they would just deposit the items in another location, to be picked up by these robot arms. Okay, it makes sense now. I'm too lazy to backspace everything I've already said, and some of it is still applicable.
Yeah, it would connect to both chests, the items would be split evenly between the two if they both accept the item that's flowing through the pipe. It'd be there for when players start to create really complex machines, which undoubtedly would happen, especially with constructors/deconstructors. With this you could place pipes of different colors right next to (Or even on top of?) each other and they won't transfer items and cause a mess. the locked pipes would be easy enough to manage, and are a simpler and slightly more versatile alternative to colored pipes, though they are also less "powerful" and don't quite compact as well. For a simple sort system you'll never have to worry about most of these connections, but as you start making increasingly complex machines with constructors, deconstructors, automated miners and whatnot would you have to worry about locked pipes. So having pipes connect items like wire does? That would be an interesting approach, since it's already ingame, it'd be easy to implement. They'd be visible all the time, because they're more likely to have interesting things going on inside of them. Perhaps just having pipe as lengths, and lengths would be consumed depending on how far apart the two are, and I think that the utility of having node-based pipes really outweighs the fact that you're not physically placing them. I was toying with an idea of click&drag to directionally place pipes, click where you want to place the pipe, drag in the direction you want items in the pipe to flow (unless interrupted by a chest that's attached directly to the pipe) Any items in the pipe would flow in the direction the pipe is "facing" so that you could join your mine's input with your surface input with your deconstructor input and not have to make separate structures for each of them. The flaw with this is that if you have dozens of chests that need to each have a directionally placed pipe on the end, then things would get tedious fast. But if pipes act like wiring, then that would be a non-issue. Click on the source pipe, drag to the output pipe, and and any items will follow that direction. If a pipe has multiple outputs, then as mentioned before, the items are split between the outputs. Any items from inputs will never travel through another input. This would also lower the need for paint, as I think these would be much more compact than painted pipes would be, though color-coding inputs to outputs, so that you know that all of the items flowing from a blue pipe would travel to the blue output, regardless of if you have green, purple, red, and pink pipes attached to that same node, each carrying their own class of material. Again, they'd be pretty easy to ignore until you're doing advanced piping, which not all players would have to get into, just like not all Minecraft players do Redstone work, there'll be plenty of content for those people to explore elsewhere, and it won't interfere with basic pipes. Placeholders would be good, but they have the same problem of you have to have the actual item to make one. Perhaps if there's a little tab on the side of the computerized chest UI that allows you to select different shadow items, you could use that, but the things would be horribly cluttered as it would have to have 1 of every item in the game. But the secondary mode slots would have the same issue. Yeah, having clogged pipes instead of exploding pipes would be a less damaging means of doing the same thing. Or you could have pipes that will flow the items around, but won't accept any more until the ones clogging are dealt with. Though I think having a chest UI is unnessicary, you'll just have to break the pipe to deal with the problem, but this time it'll explode on your own terms, instead of exploding when you're down in some dungeon and come back to realize your pipeful of Unobtainium has now despawned. Yeah, the arm is designed more for the production lines than inventory managment, it could sort your chests if it needs to, but it's mostly to take commands from Constructors and provide them the required materials. This might be possible to accomplish via chests, have any chests wired to a Constructor take commands from it, and they'll spit out the item that's needed through their designated output side. (Which might be designated by click-and-dragging with a wrench or somesuch.) If multiple chests are capable of taking the command, then the Constructor will use the nearest one or something until it's out of the material that is needed, so it'll issue the command to the next chest that can take it on the line, if there isn't any, then the Constructor will tell it's parent (the one that's wired to it that ordered it to do what it's doing) that the task cannot be completed, where the parent would cancel all the tasks on the other Constructors, and tell you (if you're the parent of that constructor) that the task couldn't be completed because you need more X material, go find X. They're designed to be the opposite of pneumatic pipes, removing items from the chests, instead of placing items in them. Yeah, they kinda work like Minecraft's Hoppers, except the chests are claiming the items, rather than the items being shoved into the chests, and by default the items keep being pushed in the direction they're travelling. It's kind of a subtle difference, but it allows the the chests to be filtering the items, rather than the pipes having to do that. EDIT: spoiler'd to alleviate giant flaming, nuclear wall of text, and added a Teal Deer For those of you not fond of reading giant flaming, nuclear walls of text, The suggestion in its current state is as follows: there are computerized chests, that will accept items you manually place in them, but automated processes, such as an "auto stack" feature from Terraria will take all of the items of the type in the chest and make new stacks, but will not take items of the types that weren't in the chest. The second feature are pneumatic pipes, they are placed like wires and transport items. They'll take anything that you throw at them, or use its UI to throw at. When used, the pipes will whisk the items away, and will enter the first chest that will take them. A basic chest will take any item, while a computerized chest will only take items of the same type that are already in it. Other things to note: pipes can be colored, and will not interact with each other when they are, even at pipe hubs. Another thread, Pneumatic Tubes, Computerized chests, Robotic Arms, Constructors, Oh My! (also linked in the OP) details the second part of piping, the Constructor and Deconstructor.
