Several times it happened now, that's why I'm noticing it: It happens lot-a-annoy-hyolotl that me ( for mistake ) or friends ( for mistake I hope ) destroy/drill chests/items on my/their spaceship. What happens is that you normally come back from a planet. Your bags are full and you're a little bit sleepy. You push drill or click weapon for mistake and three chests are plopped. Your eyes and adrenaline are popping immediatly. All contents of the chests are plopping on ground. I lost many-o-items because they disappear after 30 seconds. I was not fast enough to build a chest and put it all in there. Several experiences later I normally use 3D printer or the ship chest to hold items. But there are soooooo much great items! And it's (sorry for whining) hell-o-annoy-hyolotl! Little work: The disappearing-timer on spaceships could be increased by 5 minutes. More work: A configurable checkbox to turn of damage on spaceship would get it. Most work: A checkbox in the opened chest, which makes it lockable. You open the chest and there is next to the 16 normal slots somewhere a button "locked". If the lockable is switched on, the environment adjacent down to the chest is locked, too. Every player can toggle the locked-checkbox, so it's a nice addon. Me dumb: There's an option and I haven't noticed yet. Sorry then, please tell me if there's something like it. Ssstab all hylotl!
Alternative solutions: Remove despawn timer on ship. Don't allow chests containing items to be drilled (Terraria solution)
I'm very much in favor of simply not being able to destroy containers that have items in them. I can't think of a reason why I would need to destroy a full container anyway, not just on my ship, but in the whole game.
Would love this simple mechnic. Am not @home at the moment, but as far as I remember is a chest (and all its contents) being dropped as item if the underlying ground is removed. That the chest doesn't fly around with nothing. Remember chests are items, not blocks which have legal and illegal places to put them on. We need to be sure not to annul other game mechanics like the legal/illegal placements. Didn't noticed that myself before you mentioned this simple idea. A solution would be to have the ground where the chest is placed on being locked, too, not able to be destroyed if the chest has content. But a chest can be placed on another container, too. So you have to lock a chest with container, the chest it stays on and the ground the underlying chest is placed on. I guess as an outcome the time counter in space ships would be simplest solution. The best would be the lock of a container and the blocks/other items it stays on, but maybe it's a lot more work we non-developers would imagine at the moment.
