The Modular Searchable Storage Introduction One thing that often comes up when searching for things that a lot of players, myself included, have problems with in this game is storage. There are so many things in this game, which is amazing, but it's very hard to find what you're looking for sometimes, which is not so good. I've gone through dozens of chests to find that one thing that I needed, stared myself blind at the icons, hovered over each item to try and find it, and then just ended up crafting a new one because that was a much easier solution. I sorted my unorganized storage room by taking everything out, using the inventory auto-sort and then put everything back. That made it a bit simpler to find what I needed. When the items the player need to keep track of skyrocket, the convenience of the item management must follow. Auto-Sort Storage This comes up a lot. Why not be able to sort the items in containers just as you can do with the tabs in your inventory? This will help when a small amount of items are stored (and before the wiring tool is aquired... more on that further down). Searchable Storage Instead of having to open each chest, look into the contents and stuggle to find what you're looking for: a search function should be implemented. One suggestion I saw was to use the Shiplocker use that as a search console. The problem with how the actual storage is managed is not really clarified, though. One way to do it is to "upgrade" a dedicated spaceship room that has ship-specific storage units in it or to just have infinite storage in the locker. These solutions are pretty uncustomizable when it comes to storage. Clicking a button to upgrade storage is not very rewarding and infinite inventory feels very over powered. These suggestions are also limited to the spaceship. What if you want it in your super secret mega-base? The Modular Searchable Storage [with sorting] This solution is possible to set up anywhere, it has upgradeable storage space and it's customizable in both layout and aesthetics. It also combines sorting and searching to help those who want to find their things quickly. The basic idea is this: Wire up any type and amount of storage containers to any console, use it and it brings up a window with a search window and a sorting button. I imagine something looking like the crafting window but it goes through your entire inventory of hoarded stuff, with a "withdraw" button instead of "craft". Now, why would you have a sorting function if you're not going to look in the boxes, you say? Well, besides some people wanting to look into their boxes every once in a while to enjoy how huge their collection of stuff is, there is another reason. Say you want to deposit something stackable, but you already have some stacks of that stuff in your system, you would actually have to find the stack in the appropriate storage container to not lose storage space. Using the sort function, you could just put it in any container and push sort and it will put all the things where needed! No space lost! TL;DR Storage is troublesome. Finding and sorting is time consuming. Solution: Wire containers to a console, use the console to get a search window to find your stuff. Expand storage with more containers. [This part is mainly for the developers and modders] Things that will probably require a lot of work: For the wiring between the containers and the console not to look like a giant spiderweb, containers would have to be able to be wired together with each other and then the cluster of containers can be wired to a single console with just one wire. This would also make it possible for different layouts. I would probably suggest a different wiring node colour (green/yellow). An algorithm to sort over multiple containers. Especially tricky if there would be options to sort them into different categories (weapons, blocks, liquids etc.) into different containers. If using all containers as one big container, a similar sorting algorithm to the inventory one can be used (I think a good way to organize items in multiple containers would be following western reading rules, left to right, up to down. Example in a 3x3 grid put items in order from leftmost upper container, when that is full, use the middle leftmost container, then the bottom leftmost one. After the first column is full, go to the next one). Another way to sort if the wiring is console-storage-storage is to fill the container that's first wired to the console and then filling the next one wired and so forth. Horrible explanatory schematics here Things that will probably not require a lot of work Implementing the inventory sorting to single chests. (Needs some reworking of the code). Creating art assets and code for the search function. (Just use the same code and art as the crafting stations, they have a good system). [Developer and modders part end] Acknowledgements This concept is basically a rework of the Applied Energistics mod for Minecraft. Check out Applied Energistics here: http://ae-mod.info/ Thanks to Wellbot for coming up with an interesting auto sorting system. Check out Item Broadcaster Hyper Storage here: http://community.playstarbound.com/resources/item-broadcaster-hyper-storage.1745/ Thank you so much for reading!
