User Defined Storage Area

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

What if the player could mark a zone as storage and could then have access to everything within via the advanced inventory?

I could see balance issues as the player could pick up items across the room as easily as ones one tile away. A compromise could be to increase the pickup time depending on distance and weight. Although, this increase should not be equivilant 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.

1 Like
2

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 ā€œdance of joyā€ (irony).

3

Iā€™m imagining this as a way to assist a more organized storage method, so you donā€™t have to store everything within one tile from your survivor if you want quick and easy access to something from your item hoard.

4

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 ā€œwarehouseā€ 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 ā€œwarehouseā€ dressers/bookcases would be found in the construction menu.
Step 1: place dresser/bookcase.
Step 2: place/hang dresserā€™s/bookcaseā€™s sign.

How far away could you place a ā€œwarehouseā€ 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.)

Iā€™m 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 theyā€™re 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.

Iā€™ve already experienced very slight slowdowns after amassing ~25000+ liters of items in one area, so if this is implemented, I hope itā€™ll 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 ā€œdance 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.

5

The time sink/penalty I am thinking of is a very small increase in time required to retrieve items based on distance added to the already fairly small time required to pickup/offload items that the advanced inventory currently uses. I donā€™t think this added ā€˜travelā€™ time should be very significant at all. It would mostly be noticeable if the player is retrieving items that are a decent distance from them, maybe somewhere around 12 tiles.

I do like the idea of the clipboard/computer organizing system. Maybe this could be optional, but would greatly decrease the time to get items and might also unlock an auto-sorting option. Something like this would encourage more static and permanent bases/warehouses.

6

The current crafting range already stretches the inventory code to its limits when starting up the crafting menu. As a practical matter, weā€™d have to have a massive overhaul if how the internals work to extend the crafting range further.

7

How far is the current range for crafting? It depends whether itā€™s just on the floor or in a container as well?

8

I think itā€™s 6x3 tiles from the player and less at the 4 corners.
If you use dressers/bookcases to store your items, youā€™ll only be able to have 1 ring of them, anything behind the ring is inaccessible as a crafting ingredient.