Yet Another "Placing stuff inside other stuff" idea

Game Talk The Drawing Board
1

Probably a suggestion made before, but I have a certain idea to go for it.

How about a “stowing” mechanic, for individual storage items? The way it would work is that item inventory management would work as normal, except that storage items would either have an activation or special action ability, when used, will “open” it’s storage. Storage mechanics would work like this:
-The volume of objects stored in a piece of clothing reduce the storage value that it provides by the equivalent amount (as well as increasing weight, and volume for soft storage objects), emulating that while it could have been considered stored in that object before, you are especially reserving it for storage here to, for instance, ensure you aren’t dropping your ammo or combat supplies when you drop a backpack to get ready for a fight.

-You can overflow items somewhat, but the overflow has significant increasing encumberment penalties to the specific item of clothing. The two limits of overflow would be
–At most, 50% of the volume of the largest item in the storage
–Must not overflow past 120% of the available storage.
Such as cramming that last tent kit into your backpack, for instance.

-Clothing with items in them can be carried around in your hands, and items like bindles, shopping bags, and briefcases must now be carried by hand (though, could very well be carried in pairs if/when a dual wield system is implemented).

-Destroyed storage items will spill their contents on the ground, appropriately.

-People who don’t use this stowing feature won’t see much difference in gameplay, except for a difference in how shopping bags and briefcases work. This is mainly because the volume pool master-inventory mechanic will still exist as-is, just that anyone using this wacky inventory management system will be able to tell what drops when, as well as store and move large volumes of items in sorted backpacks and bags as appropriate.

What do you think?

Speaking of all this, it seems like a change like this would totally welcome using the current storage items (burlap bags, cardboard boxes, etc) for sorting and storing lots of small stuff, as well as the inclusion of larger cardboard boxes. A dream come true!

I imagine a big pain is sorting how all this stuff would be handled and making the UI for it all, hehe.

2

I gave an idea for something very similar a while back. I still like it.

Basically “let all soft storage containers be collapsible and take up what space items inside take up+ a little bit.”

example I gave was a medical bag/first-aid kit inside a backpack, and suggested unlimited folder-ing/ layering of container objects.

Don’t think it went anywhere. More important fixes, difficult to do, and general not efficient/ how do you even do that effectively in THIS game was the basic attitude. I don’t think ANYONE is against the idea. But a good solution that wouldn’t make the inventory management annoyingly tedious or annoying while making it more realistic and all around more “each container is separate”-y has yet to be found and implemented.

3

[quote=“Litppunk, post:2, topic:11457”]I gave an idea for something very similar a while back. I still like it.

Basically “let all soft storage containers be collapsible and take up what space items inside take up+ a little bit.”

example I gave was a medical bag/first-aid kit inside a backpack, and suggested unlimited folder-ing/ layering of container objects.

Don’t think it went anywhere. More important fixes, difficult to do, and general not efficient/ how do you even do that effectively in THIS game was the basic attitude. I don’t think ANYONE is against the idea. But a good solution that wouldn’t make the inventory management annoyingly tedious or annoying while making it more realistic and all around more “each container is separate”-y has yet to be found and implemented.[/quote]Well, in terms of saving the player from tedium what I figure is that the best way to do it is to not disrupt original inventory management. So if, for instance, you never used the feature, then your inventory items will just have volume values as normal, and you’d still have that inventory volume pool where the items are abstractly treated as “in your inventory”, as it already currently is.
Programming the new stuff to work however, is another feat in of itself. Not exactly impossible (we’ve got magazines now, so…), but whether someone’s up to coding it or otherwise finds it worth their time is another question entirely.

4

^

I don’t think I have anything to add here. Good to see someone is kicking the beehive every now and then to make sure things don’t get too quite somehow. (as if “our” modders/devs would ever get that lax in updating Cata.

5

worst thing is creating user friendly interface and do not making micro managment hell