Suggestion: Autodrop for easier item sorting in base

[jirow]

So, my suggestion would be an autodropping feature, I think it would increase QoL exponentially.

Most of my bases nowadays are just a huge mess of stuff on the floor, I don’t even bother splitting them up among furniture because of the sheer amount of items I haul in.

My suggestion would be making possible tagging of furniture as autodrop zones for specific items. The tag could be whichever, such as material or category.

Once that “furniture tile” is highlighted, a single key hit on the keyboard would put items located on all tiles around me (including small cargo vehicles, such as wheelbarrows, shopping carts, custom ones, etc) right where they should be.

Say I have a loaded cart with stuff, but I only want to put the books I have on that bookshelf. The bookshelf tile has already been highlighted for this purpose (c:books autodrop). I move adjacent to it and hit “key”. There could be a confirmation prompt (or not - I guess it could be customizable). Done, all the books on surrounding tiles are put on that specific bookshelf, so I don’t have to skim around and insert filter “c:books” every single time I haul goods in. Then c:food, then c:clothes, then c:tools… You catch my drift.

[_k1]

Bonus point for making the furniture only take items of specific material, color, and degree of damage, with shopping cart track interlinking different shelves.

[kevin.granade]

That’s a solid idea, I personally prefer linking it to furniture.

It’s also possible to extend this to simply have a hotkey to “unload inventory at base” and have you run around dropping things off.

[jirow]

Yea, the idea of furniture linking is to try and make them more useful besides aesthetics and increased volume.
Also, I agree with the “unload inventory at base” hotkey, I just tried to keep my suggestion simple but I recognize there are further implications and possible optimizations to it, which I wholeheartedly support.

The organizational grind just takes too much time and effort as it is now.

[Mantar]

I wanna say, as a recovering CDDA hoarder, this idea is so good it might cause me a relapse!

[_k1]

This bug: https://github.com/CleverRaven/Cataclysm-DDA/issues/1120 needs fixing before we put things in furniture, otherwise our loot will be in danger when gun fight breaks out in our little warehouse.

[jirow]

I don’t see how the fixing of this bug is necessary for the implementation of my suggestion.
If you fear using furniture, just keep doing what you’ve been doing, it’s not like autodrop would be mandatory.

[Zalli]

Yes! That would be awesome. Although I would much prefer if we have an option to drop items to places where there are items of that type. My base’s items are mostly in a 3x3 item dump so that I can reach everywhere with ‘/’ while stand in the middle, and I usually categorize it by my own preferences.

My latest style is that there’s a raw resource pile (scrap metal to two-by-fours), simple components (pipes and usually also thread etc), electronics (electronic components, batteries, broken manhacks, etc), clothes, books & bionics & mutagens, guns, food and drink (also containers), chemistry (also medical items and drugs) and tools. Many of these dump-tiles are not defined by their in-game item categories, but by the other items in them, so it would be nice if an auto-drop feature would work with that style without having to add a really long list of items to each container/tile (with auto-pickup -like wildcard syntax probably).

[kevin.granade]

Unfortunately, having the game guess at things like that is easier said than done >_<
If you literally want " drop items on the same square as items of the same kind", that should be doable.

[Zalli]

Yes, that’s what I meant, sorry that was a bit confusing way to say it

[jirow]

I guess that would be doable with the implementation of custom tagging.