So I have been thinking, the shorting of loot is great, just hitting a key and it gets shorted automatically.
But after a while if you are a pack rat like me that brings back everything to your base, you start to accumulate lots of lots of loot and it gets harder to keep track of and short out. And when you get an extreme amount like I do it actually slows down your computer by a significant amount. So I have been thinking of ways to improve the pack rat experience.
First is inspired by a bundle of rags. Being able to bundle up or store things in bags and boxes would work great. One big difference would be that unlike how the bundle of rags works now you would be able to access the items as if they where not bundled.
Maybe its better if I give an example; you have cardboard box (or any other viable storage item) and a bunch of rocks, lets say 20. You put the rocks in a box and as far as the game is concerned the box of rocks is one object instead of several, or 21 in the case of the box of rocks (one box and 20 rocks), it will require much less object handling. But when you access the crafting screen, you got 20 rocks to work with (but not the box, as it in use). To simplify things, limit it to one type of item per storage object, perhaps the first item put in. You then don’t have to have any crafting involved in storing stuff and thus no endless recipes. It could handle arbitrary items from mods in such a case. In fact, thinking of it, it would basically be like how liquids are handled and stored right now; a container and single type of liquid that can be accessed when crafting. Yeah, liquids are the perfect example, you could construct stationary storage boxes like you do with barrels, have stablet objects like bottles that contain liquids or build storage units in vehicles that dispenses said items. Really handy for us that like to create stationary base “vehicles”. Then you can access it anywhere in the vehicles like you can with liquids. You could still store data about individual items state somewhere, like if you have 50 socks with various states of disrepair the container keep tracks of it but as far normal game operation, its a single object of 50 socks unless you look into the box specifically.
Now, that is mid game item handling. For late game handling, I have not played too much with player bases, the one where you have NPC doing stuff, but I have done a little. I remember there being a npc who can store food in some maner. I was thinking that you should be able to design a “quartermaster” npc. Basically a npc who hangs out on your base to whom you can dump whatever items you want and stores them for you and gives them back upon request. Simple enough, kinda like trading with NPCs right now, the item disappeared and is stored in some big list in the heavens so item handling is reduced. Now, I have more ideas related to that tough, that would make npc base building much better; all these items would be directly accessible for crafting anywhere on the base. I like building my base so I have everything within crafting distance and can immediately know what can or cannot craft and what items I have or not. When you build these NPC bases its modular and things are spread out; the garage, the kitchen, so I kinda have to run from station to station, and I don’t know if I have the required items. With this, you can access the items stored with quartermaster wherever you are in the base as if you can see items and they are in crafting distance. Perhaps it would then also be wise to give you the option to define what items is available for what purpose with the quartermaster. Like, this is for the player to use alone, this can be used by NPC, this cannot be used for crafting, this object can only be retrived and used by directly talking with the quartermaster, let npc use this if its above this amount, not used for crafting if less than etc. To avoid accidentally using rare items.
A little more complex, but also more interesting and challenging would be if this meant that you would have to build storage facilities too to store the things. And perhaps most complicated would be if then said storage facility would actually be used by quartermaster to actually store things there physically instead of just maintaining a list of items he have. So you could physically walk into the storage facilities and retrieve items (or store them). Would work well with my boxes and bags storage suggestion from earlier so its not huge heaps of things but rather stacks boxes and bags (probably the stack able kind, not the constructed kind, as you would it would require enormous space to have one tile per item type, unless you want to maybe make a big category box, vehicle parts, books, etc). Not really a necessary feature, but would be useful if your quartermaster got killed or something.
What do you guys think?