Revamping Inventories – development log #222

This week, the team has been integrating the new warehouses into the planetary inventory system, which required a bigger rework than one might think. Meanwhile, the big release after Presence is already taking shape.

Michi (molp)

I continued to work on the warehouses this week. Last week I showed you the user interface that allows to rent storage units and while it seems almost finished from the UI perspective there is still a lot of work to do on the backend. I started by actually generating a new store once the player rents a storage unit for the first time on any given planet. Of course, the capacity of this store needs to be adjusted when another storage unit is being rented. Multiple units at the same warehouse are combined into one logical store, that way it is way more comfortable to use by the players.

With the warehouses in place, it is now possible to have more than one fixed (e.g. non-ship) store at a given location, the store that comes with a base and a warehouse storage unit. This sounds trivial, but it has implications: For example, there is the INVP command that shows the inventory at a given planetary location. Which inventory should be shown if there are two stores at a location? We decided to remove the INVP command in favor of a more flexible INV command!

The INV command can now be used in three different ways:

1. If there are no parameters for the command, a list of all stores (bases, ships, fuel tanks, warehouses) is shown.
2. If the command has a planetary address as parameter (like INV XK-194c), it will either show a list of stores at that location (if there are more than one) or just show the inventory of the store.
3. The command also accepts the store ID as a parameter (INV 3F2S) and will show its contents-

I also added filters to the command which allow to show/hide certain types of stores. The filter settings are persistent if the command is used in a screen.

Fabian (Counterpoint)

This week I honed in on one particular version of the concept for the next big release after Presence. We’ll soon discuss it in the team and see if we agree on the general direction or want to make some changes.

In terms of Presence itself, I’m making up my mind about the before-mentioned balancing changes to MM buy prices. Expect agriculture to get a nerf and ores a substantial buff pretty much across the board. In addition, a couple minerals will be tweaked and construction prefabs brought more in line with one another. Another balancing topic I’ve been looking into that also came up in the Discord last week is hydroponics (HYF) vs. conventional farming (FRM). At the moment, HYF is a bit too inefficient, so we will make NS (nutrient solution) a little more affordable. There will also be some additional tweaks to the HYF recipes.

Last but not least, with Presence we will also add a new recipe to HYF! Our APEX PRO user Rubicate made use of the “Design a Commodity” perk. Soon you will be able to use your hydroponics farms to produce mushrooms of the Agaricaceae rubicatii family. What’s more, they won’t even require water as an input material and thus might open up some new possibilities!

Martin

Once again, a very short report from my side: While it’s rare, it happens that things go according to plan. And this week was one of those times. As discussed last week, I wrapped up my client-side work on “item support” for stores and handed over the changes to Michi. He’ll be able to implement the new shipping contracts based on this foundation.

I also spent quite some time on game design calls with Michi and Fabian as well as going over our reworked terms and conditions which we hope to finally get ready for release later this month.

As always: We’d love to hear what you think. Join us on Discord or the forums!

Happy trading!