Cargo containers should have a blacklist/whitelist items in their control panel
Simple concept. In the control panel of cargo containers, I should be able to maintain a whitelist/blacklist of items that can go into that particular cargo container. If I put something into a linked inventory (at any access point), the inventory control should push the items into the whitelisted cargo container for that item by preference, and if a cargo has items marked 'blacklist', then those items should never go into that cargo container even if it's empty.
Example: You have a stack of steel plate in your gigantic backpack and you want to store it. You might set a specific cargo container as your 'steel plate' container, or as your 'repair materials' container or whatever. You want all your steel plate to go here and you don't want to maintain more than one cargo container full of steel plate. If this were the space middle ages, you'd have to manually do that because in the space middle ages everything needs to be done by hand. Thankfully we have computers and automation (hopefully), so in this example, if I've setup the cargo rules so that all the containers are blacklisted for steel plate except the one I want it to go into, then I could shove my steel plate into any cargo port and it would get routed by computers and automation to the proper cargo. Once it's full, and I keep trying to shove steel plate into my cargo, I should get a variant of the inventory full message because even if the other cargo spaces areempty, none of them can hold what you're trying to shove into the cargo and the computer voice should call me dumb or ideally point out that I've setup my inventory to not allow any more steel plate beyond the container full I already have.
The blacklisting would seem at first glance to be a fairly easy thing to put together, since you already have this exact filtering for specific blocks. Example, why you can't put steel plate into your Gatling turret. This would just provide a similar blacklisting capability but in a user-controllable way.
Cheers and keep up the good work.
I like this feedback
I know this can be 'sort of' handled by conveyor sorters, which ends up over-complicating conveyor systems by making them one way at spots and generally having to double up on space. Simple internal filtering that simply provides logic like 'should this be stored here?' yes/no yet still allows the block to pass conveyor bi-directionally is greatly preferred.
I know this can be 'sort of' handled by conveyor sorters, which ends up over-complicating conveyor systems by making them one way at spots and generally having to double up on space. Simple internal filtering that simply provides logic like 'should this be stored here?' yes/no yet still allows the block to pass conveyor bi-directionally is greatly preferred.
This would be a simple solution. But I’m afraid it might be considered against the “accessibility” and clarity "goals" of the conveyor system that developers have in mind.
There is already a suggestion about a “unified inventory view,” where you can see all inventories on a grid collapsed into one logical inventory space for easier item transfers. I like it, and that would be a really nice feature, yet blacklists and whitelists could create confusion about why you can’t add more items into seemingly available space. You would see total free space, but not necessarily free space for a specific item category.
Players might also buy ships from economy stations with container filters already configured and then get confused when certain items refuse to move where expected — unless they manually check every cargo container in the control panel to see the applied rules.
As an alternative, I would propose a set of specialized cargo containers for specific item categories. For example:
These containers would automatically have priority for the items they are designed to hold over universal cargo containers (if we still have those). So when you dump steel plates into the system, they would first try to go into a “simple components” container before using generic storage.
Then, in the “unified inventory view,” specialized cargo types would not fully merge together. Instead, you would see several logical inventory groups for clarity.
For example:
Instead of managing 17 separate cargo inventories, which might also be of different sizes, you would effectively manage just 5 logical storage groups. That is still much cleaner and easier to understand while preserving sorting and ease of management.
As a bonus, specialized cargo containers could visually represent the items stored inside them, since they would no longer contain a random mix of everything. Ore containers, for example, could visibly show raw voxel materials inside.
And honestly, it also simply makes sense from an immersion perspective not to store ores, advanced electronics, hand tools, and food all inside the exact same container :)
If you want to see a real example of this concept, there is already a mod for SE1.
This would be a simple solution. But I’m afraid it might be considered against the “accessibility” and clarity "goals" of the conveyor system that developers have in mind.
There is already a suggestion about a “unified inventory view,” where you can see all inventories on a grid collapsed into one logical inventory space for easier item transfers. I like it, and that would be a really nice feature, yet blacklists and whitelists could create confusion about why you can’t add more items into seemingly available space. You would see total free space, but not necessarily free space for a specific item category.
Players might also buy ships from economy stations with container filters already configured and then get confused when certain items refuse to move where expected — unless they manually check every cargo container in the control panel to see the applied rules.
As an alternative, I would propose a set of specialized cargo containers for specific item categories. For example:
These containers would automatically have priority for the items they are designed to hold over universal cargo containers (if we still have those). So when you dump steel plates into the system, they would first try to go into a “simple components” container before using generic storage.
Then, in the “unified inventory view,” specialized cargo types would not fully merge together. Instead, you would see several logical inventory groups for clarity.
For example:
Instead of managing 17 separate cargo inventories, which might also be of different sizes, you would effectively manage just 5 logical storage groups. That is still much cleaner and easier to understand while preserving sorting and ease of management.
As a bonus, specialized cargo containers could visually represent the items stored inside them, since they would no longer contain a random mix of everything. Ore containers, for example, could visibly show raw voxel materials inside.
And honestly, it also simply makes sense from an immersion perspective not to store ores, advanced electronics, hand tools, and food all inside the exact same container :)
If you want to see a real example of this concept, there is already a mod for SE1.
All good points, I personally rely heavily on the automatic inventory sorting mod, and hope that something similar will eventually find its way to SE2. If simplicity is the driving factor, then I'd suggest looking at another suggestion of mine: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/53945-gather-all-as-a-right-click-inventory-feature
In this case, it wouldn't matter at all where the stuff is stored, you could just open any inventory, find a single stack of the stuff you're looking for and then 'gather all' to pull as much as possible of that type of item into the container you're looking at.
I could easily be convinced that a blacklist/whitelist by item type as you mention above is a way to do it also.
Most likely, I'll eventually have to rely on some sort of mod, I assume.
All good points, I personally rely heavily on the automatic inventory sorting mod, and hope that something similar will eventually find its way to SE2. If simplicity is the driving factor, then I'd suggest looking at another suggestion of mine: https://support.keenswh.com/spaceengineers2/pc/topic/53945-gather-all-as-a-right-click-inventory-feature
In this case, it wouldn't matter at all where the stuff is stored, you could just open any inventory, find a single stack of the stuff you're looking for and then 'gather all' to pull as much as possible of that type of item into the container you're looking at.
I could easily be convinced that a blacklist/whitelist by item type as you mention above is a way to do it also.
Most likely, I'll eventually have to rely on some sort of mod, I assume.
Been thinking about this and I think a simpler solution might be to have items in cargo have an affinity for cargo containers that already contain that item. Meaning, if I have 5 cargo containers, and container A has gold ore in it (I'm an optimist), I should be able to go to any cargo container and dump more gold ore and it should end up in container A. i.e. the cargo logic might be best served always trying to add to stacks that are already in your cargo network whenever possible. I may do a separate feedback.
Been thinking about this and I think a simpler solution might be to have items in cargo have an affinity for cargo containers that already contain that item. Meaning, if I have 5 cargo containers, and container A has gold ore in it (I'm an optimist), I should be able to go to any cargo container and dump more gold ore and it should end up in container A. i.e. the cargo logic might be best served always trying to add to stacks that are already in your cargo network whenever possible. I may do a separate feedback.
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