Hello folks! Happy new year, hope you had a fun time with friends and family.
The story:
When me and my friends played 7D2D on a 4 man server, something that always annoyed us -each and every one of us- was that it took a long time to get everything sorted when you got back from a POI raid with 4 cars full of loot.
Although we had a big, well designed storage area, with dedicated crates (including signs and colours) to make it easy to know where things go, while minimizing the running distance, it still took a long time to get everything were it was supposed to go.
At one point, people got so annoyed that we took turns being "the sorter" who then had to do all the hauling by themselves, while the others completed other jobs around the base. Being the dedicated sorter could easily take away 10 minutes of your time.
The TL;DR of the issue:
Well sorted storage is a must.
7D2D has a lot of items.
Sorting a lot of items into a lot of crates takes a lot of time.
The proposed solution:
A storage controller. A block that can be "hooked up" to crates. (Wire tool for example)
How does it work?
Essentially, it'd be a UI showing you how many crates are connected. It would have the same "quicksort" buttons we already have for inventory sorting (eg. sort similar items into the crate).
If you press the button, the "Storage Controller" will then sort everything in your inventory that is already present in ANY of the connected crates, into the respective crate.
Why would this be better?
Instead of running to a lot of crates, possibly having to search for the right one (where did we store Glue again?), you only ever have to run to the "Storage Controller", dump your inventory, run back to the car, back to the controller, rince and repeat. Speeding up the process by a LOT.
But I don't wanna dump EVERYTHING! I always keep [item] on hand, I don't want this to get sorted away!
Introducing the "Favourite Item" system. Essentially the option to mark items in your inventory so they get ignored by the Storage Controller.
That way you can mark your stacks of wood and fibre as your "favourites", so they stay in your inventory while everything else gets sorted away.
Bonus idea -- Advanced Storage Controller
As a bonus, the Storage Controller "could" technically interact as one big chest. Add a searchbar into it and you made finding things in storage much less of a pain. But this is not a priority. Finding 10 glue is much less of an issue than having to store 500 items in 60 crates. So this idea is really just a bonus.
Any references?
There's a minecraft mod that works in a rather similar fashion. It's called "Storage Drawers".
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/storage-drawers
Reasons against the idea?
Obviously, if you have no issue with the current storage situation, you don't have to use the controller.
This idea is an "addition", not a change. The vanilla sorting would be entirely untouched and work the same as always. The controller is an extra block with its own function and UI.
You wanna use it and make your life easier, do it. You don't wanna mess with it and sort manually, cool as well.
But, developing a feature takes time. If you're not using this feature, then the time is essentially "wasted" for you, because the devs could have implemented something you wanted yourself.
I still think it's worth pursuing though.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Cheers,
-Raghnal
The story:
When me and my friends played 7D2D on a 4 man server, something that always annoyed us -each and every one of us- was that it took a long time to get everything sorted when you got back from a POI raid with 4 cars full of loot.
Although we had a big, well designed storage area, with dedicated crates (including signs and colours) to make it easy to know where things go, while minimizing the running distance, it still took a long time to get everything were it was supposed to go.
At one point, people got so annoyed that we took turns being "the sorter" who then had to do all the hauling by themselves, while the others completed other jobs around the base. Being the dedicated sorter could easily take away 10 minutes of your time.
The TL;DR of the issue:
Well sorted storage is a must.
7D2D has a lot of items.
Sorting a lot of items into a lot of crates takes a lot of time.
The proposed solution:
A storage controller. A block that can be "hooked up" to crates. (Wire tool for example)
How does it work?
Essentially, it'd be a UI showing you how many crates are connected. It would have the same "quicksort" buttons we already have for inventory sorting (eg. sort similar items into the crate).
If you press the button, the "Storage Controller" will then sort everything in your inventory that is already present in ANY of the connected crates, into the respective crate.
Why would this be better?
Instead of running to a lot of crates, possibly having to search for the right one (where did we store Glue again?), you only ever have to run to the "Storage Controller", dump your inventory, run back to the car, back to the controller, rince and repeat. Speeding up the process by a LOT.
But I don't wanna dump EVERYTHING! I always keep [item] on hand, I don't want this to get sorted away!
Introducing the "Favourite Item" system. Essentially the option to mark items in your inventory so they get ignored by the Storage Controller.
That way you can mark your stacks of wood and fibre as your "favourites", so they stay in your inventory while everything else gets sorted away.
Bonus idea -- Advanced Storage Controller
As a bonus, the Storage Controller "could" technically interact as one big chest. Add a searchbar into it and you made finding things in storage much less of a pain. But this is not a priority. Finding 10 glue is much less of an issue than having to store 500 items in 60 crates. So this idea is really just a bonus.
Any references?
There's a minecraft mod that works in a rather similar fashion. It's called "Storage Drawers".
https://www.curseforge.com/minecraft/mc-mods/storage-drawers
Reasons against the idea?
Obviously, if you have no issue with the current storage situation, you don't have to use the controller.
This idea is an "addition", not a change. The vanilla sorting would be entirely untouched and work the same as always. The controller is an extra block with its own function and UI.
You wanna use it and make your life easier, do it. You don't wanna mess with it and sort manually, cool as well.
But, developing a feature takes time. If you're not using this feature, then the time is essentially "wasted" for you, because the devs could have implemented something you wanted yourself.
I still think it's worth pursuing though.
Thanks for your time and consideration.
Cheers,
-Raghnal
