I had thought about this a while ago and imagined of something like the aisles at a grocery/hardware store.
In game you would use dressers/bookcases (they both have a volume capacity of 2000 liters) as the sources of your items available in the āwarehouseā crafting menu. You could have either a computerized or clipboard based system of keeping a database.
In order for a player to be able to use the items available in the database for crafting, they would need to either have a tablet/laptop/terminal (high-tech) or clipboard (low-tech) on their person or adjacent to them if they used a terminal.
As for which dressers/bookcases would be included in the database system, a simple wooden sign would be placed/hanged on a dresser/bookcase.
A new construction option for āwarehouseā dressers/bookcases would be found in the construction menu.
Step 1: place dresser/bookcase.
Step 2: place/hang dresserās/bookcaseās sign.
How far away could you place a āwarehouseā dresser and still have them within reach for crafting?
If it was up to me, I would make them accessible so long as they are inside the area at your most zoomed out view AND you have physical access to them (inside a room with the door open? Yes. Inside a room with the door closed? No.)
Iām a hoarder and I prefer organization over just dumping items on a tile until it is full of random junk.
I would probably have a warehouse where rows would be dedicated for: other, food, spare parts, and vehicle parts, since theyāre usually the first categories that I amass multiple tiles/bookcases/dressers full of stuff.
Upon returning from a scavenging/harvesting trip, I would open the fairly wide gate, drive my vehicle in and unload the different categories of items on their respective rows of shelves in the warehouse.
Iāve already experienced very slight slowdowns after amassing ~25000+ liters of items in one area, so if this is implemented, I hope itāll somehow address the slowdown issues.
A compromise could be to increase the pickup time depending on distance and weight. Although, this increase should not be equivalent to the time it would take to walk the same distance to retrieve the item. It would be much less of an increase in order to simulate picking up sequential objects that happen to be nearby each other.
heh. increased time to produce as cost of availability. good idea.
increase radius for search of components + calculate moving and picking-dropping time. and if your inventory is full - assume what you use only your hands. i.e. if your hand can handle only one two-by-four - when you can ādance of joyā (irony).
People waste more time looking for what they need going through several piles of junk Fallout 4 scrounger perk than they do bringing it back to their crafting bench.
I guess if you really wanted to add a time-sink/penalty, every time you add items to the warehouse shelves, you would need to spend some time updating your electronic/paper database before you can use the tablet/laptop/terminal/clipboard for crafting.