I think I've read a dozen or more suggestions regarding storage - more storage, organizing it, automating it - but nothing really comprehensive or popular. I suspect it's important for what proposed mechanics to be in line with the mechanics and themes already present in the game, to have a hope of implementation, so let's give that a go. My goal for these suggestions is that they reduce the hassle of storing many items of many different kinds. All the packrats out there know how much hassle storing large amounts of different items is. It involves many containers, and searching through them to find existing stacks of whatever you're trying to store. The first simple step to fixing this might be this; Adjacent containers are automatically linked. When you open a linked container, all the linked inventories are opened in the same GUI. All the linked inventories behave like a single inventory for the purposes of the GUI. Shift-clicking, and any quick-sort that might be added, work like you'd expect automatically. Importantly, on the the back end, there's no change to how containers work; each chest is still its own, normal 16-slot inventory. The aesthetics, and occupied space of your storage remains the same, but it's less hassle to use. You might want to limit how many inventories can be linked for practical reasons, which can be implemented causing any placement of a storage item that results in an invalid linking to be an invalid placement. . (a poorly cut-together GUI mock-up) As a complementary addition to this (and something that's been suggested several times before), some quick-sort and quick-transfer buttons could be added. For our purposes here I think that a quick-sort (order and re-stack everything in the storage inventory) and a quick-transfer (move all items in the player inventory that match an item in storage, from the player to the storage). This would remove all the laborious checking and shift-clicking. Also note, these functions apply across all linked inventories when applied to the linked inventory GUI. That'd be enough to make me quite happy. It'd mean when returning to base with a new pile of swag, you could open one container in each of your themed stockpiles and hit one button, and you'd maintain a sorted stash of items, essentially as large as your like with no added complication. That said, automation has been talked about a fair bit, and it seems in theme, especially later on and in higher tiers, so let's take a crack at that, too. For this suggestion I have to introduce a new notion of tags on items. I don't mean the player tagging items (although I suppose you might allow that). I just mean that items have a number of generic signifiers that identify them as being part of a group. For example, item type might be one (weapon, armor, decorative, storage, etc). Race of origin might be another (generic, avian, glitch, etc). Regardless of exactly how you implement it, you need a way of grouping items in a way that's fairly general. The mechanic I'm suggesting I'll generically call 'transport tubes' (this is hardly original, I'm just suggesting a particular format here). Tubes are laid down in the same way as wires are (with a particular tool, normally invisible, from point to point). Tubes can be placed between storage items, and they consider linked inventories to be a single inventory. You connect a tube to input or output on an inventory, much like wires. The tube placing tool also allows you to set a filter for each tube, which determines what kind of items will be automatically moved from the input to the output. The filter defaults to 'none', and can be set to 'all', or to any item tag. You might allow more complex filter conditions. How complex and powerful this system is is fully determined by how fancy you want to allow the boolean logic in the filters to be. I suspect that between linked inventories and transport tubes you could cater to pretty much anything the player might want in terms of organization and storage, while the basic elements involved remain simple and intuitive. If you can find any problems with this suggestion, please post them and I'll see if I can address them. I'd also encourage you to post a link to any other storage suggestion you think is worthwhile, and to vote for this one. I don't really mind if my suggestion's used, but I would like the devs to address these issues in some way!
What happens if you connect more containers than your screen resolution can display the capacity of? Unless! The displays are collapsible...
Yeah we need something like Quick stack Quick sort Loot everything "ender chest" Transport pipes (seems like you got inspired by buildcraft) Maybe even some kind of fuel storage or a shared container. It would be nice to have some kind of lock too. Maybe the lock could look something like this. Artwork done by me please don't claim as your own.
You can either limit the number of containers that can be linked (as I detailed in the original post), or add page-scrolling. Whichever works better/is easier to implement. I preferred redpower, back when I was playing minecraft! Or railcraft, but transport via railways is much less practical when you're working with two dimensions. But yeah, it's by no means an original idea. I just thought it was worthwhile to note that it could be implemented using the same system as wires.
Perhaps having some containers be wirable, and they can be wired to an inventory console (or computer), so when you access the console, you can text search, or sort by type.
It'd probably be sufficient to have a console capable of searching all nearby inventories, rather than requiring wiring as an extra step; as long as the search can highlight the specific containers that hold the searched-for items. I'm having trouble imagining a scenario where you want some containers searched, but not all!
this idea is pretty awesome. In addition large storage objects in the game are hugely inefficient and should be rebalanced as such. with scrolling inventory you would not have to worry about how big of capacity it can hold. I also love the idea of a centralized Inventory console. You could have it so that it just picks up all storage containers in a structure so you can do quick inventory management. it would be great if you could have customizable tabs where you can divide the total storage available as you please and label the tabs.
