Suggestion: Overflow Buffer for Weapons / Drone Schematics

[Wyvern]

Currently, if you have three augmentations and an event grants you a fourth, the fourth one goes into an overflow window off to the left of the ship equipment tab, and you have until you jump to pick which three you are keeping.

I'd suggest a similar mechanic for weapons & drone schematics; there's nothing quite like being told "You've been awarded a Burst Laser III" and then discovering that actually, no, you got nothing because it's been too long since you found a store to sell stuff at, and there's no other way to get rid of weapons / schematics you don't want to keep.

[Gorlom]

You do get scrap from it since you dismantle it. with the overflow buffer you wouldn't get any scrap. (as you don't from the augment.

I kinda want to keep it as is right now. the inventory is sufficient imo.

[GozerTC]

Why not a "choose what you scrap" option? Similar to the overflow but still gives you scrap?

[fall_ark]

Plus, why shouldn't I be able to dismantle the ones already on my ship/in my inventory?

[Gorlom]

I guess it's some kind of balance mechanic. I'm not sure tbh.

[geldonyetich]

I think weapons and drones already have an overflow buffer - it's called the inventory: four weapons or drones you've yet to equip on your slots and you need to strategically choose whether to keep them around for later or sell them at the next store, thereby opening up space for more. Giving you a fifth slot is basically just asking for a larger inventory, lessening the urgency of making this choice. Not a terribad idea, but one with pros and cons to it.

I can definitely see issue with the ship-wide augmentations (e.g. "Scrap Recovery Arm"), which do not go in the inventory. Once you've got three, that's pretty much it, you're stuck with it and not able to find additional ones although you can buy/sell at the store. In that case, I could definitely see the use for an off-slot to decide whether or not you want to keep your existing augments or swap that one in.

Although, if there was a ship-wide augmentation inventory slot, I think you'd have to make it so the player can only do it at stores. This is to prevent certain exploits. (E.g. Swapping in and out a hull repair arm, getting both the benefit of increased scrap when not that badly damaged and repairs when the hull is damaged, granting a rather formidable bit of flexibility in the otherwise-tight scrap economy balance.)

A related suggestion that occurred to me earlier: I'd like it if some ship hulls could carry more ship-wide augmentations. In other words, have an advantage of some ship hulls being the ability to carry four augmentations. You could even make it so some ship hulls were disadvantaged to be unable to carry more than two in exchange for some advantage.

[Wyvern]

I think weapons and drones already have an overflow buffer - it's called the inventory: four weapons or drones you've yet to equip on your slots and you need to strategically choose whether to keep them around for later or sell them at the next store, thereby opening up space for more. Giving you a fifth slot is basically just asking for a larger inventory, lessening the urgency of making this choice. Not a terribad idea, but one with pros and cons to it.

The problem is that this doesn't work. You can't choose to keep around or sell if you don't have a store, and if you get a fifth inventory item (weapon or schematic), it just vanishes without any choice at all. The "fifth slot" I'm suggesting is just to let you decide, when you go over, which to keep or not - like the augment overflow slot, anything there would vanish when you jumped; it wouldn't let you keep any more items than you already can. The particular situation I ran into, there simply hadn't been any stores for long enough that my inventory was full and I started losing out on weapons - despite the fact that some of the things in my inventory were items I'd've happily thrown away if I'd had the option.

[geldonyetich]

The problem is that this doesn't work. You can't choose to keep around or sell if you don't have a store

I guess that could happen; though it's be unlikely since you'd first have to fill your equipped weapon (and possibly drone) slots and then your four inventory spaces without ever encountering a encountering a store. Given a randomly generated universe, it will occasionally happen, but I've seen enough Let's Plays to know it's fairly improbable.

The "fifth slot" I'm suggesting is just to let you decide, when you go over, which to keep or not - like the augment overflow slot, anything there would vanish when you jumped

Oh, that's what you meant.

I dug up an old official dev reply on the subject, and it's somewhat close to what we're talking about here.

When you get the new item you get a new popup (assuming there wasn't a bug). You should be able to drag a weapon from your cargo and swap it with the new item. Then whenever you've put the item you DON'T want inside the popup window, you can discard it with the button.

Was anyone else confused by this? Perhaps we need to make this mechanic more clear.

So... I guess you already have your fifth slot? Come to think of it, I actually have seen it in action once or twice in Lets Plays. There was some concern that the GUI may not have made this clear to use, and they've been attempting to make it clearer with popup messages. This also explains why there's no "jettison" button anymore: it's technically impossible to overfill your inventory now.

There was also talk of adding the same mechanic for ship-wide augments. It uses the same method.

[Matthew]

There is an overflow box for weapons/drones, it's just not apparently working. It's identical to the augmentation box. I will fix it and it will be in the next update

[Matthew]

Looks like this: http://i.imgur.com/xsqnd.png