URGENTLY NEEDED ***More R&D TABS or PET tabs

starcruiser · January 2018

Any Devs or whoever is in charge for making the decision to add this feature please be aware that some people are already maxing out of inventory space for R&D components.

Now with the addition of re-engineering this is even more pronounced and not sure why it was completely ignored from development. Salvage grinding has created another critical need to get more storage in this game.

Some of us have been doing STO for 8 years and accumulated lots of upgraded items including R&D mats, pets among other and even exceeded the maximum limit for what is available as bank inventory slots. It is time to please work on the quality of life for players who need these features.

I’m not asking for a handout but as many others expressed through the years, I’m also willing to pay for them as a service item at the C-store. It is a win-win situation for ALL and hope we are not talking about these same issues on next year’s anniversary.

warpangel · January 2018

+1 for pet tab, for what it's worth. The components you can just use or sell.

corelogik · January 2018

We don't need more R&D Tabs, just more slots. Also, a tab for Salvage in the replicator would be nice. Like the recycle tab except only salvageable items show up.

As for the pets tab, I'm meh about it. I can see the desire but don't have enough pets myself that I need a whole tab for them.

echatty · January 2018

Agree with warpangel. Pet tab please.

gjohnny1990 · January 2018

My R&D is always full, I like to keep alot of components so I can build things I need on a whim, it'd be nice having more slots, and a Pet tab would also be very welcome, I don't bother with pets simply because I can't afford the space they take.

storules · January 2018

Plus one too.

We need Tabs or slots at the C-store and agreed with OP as done with many other requests ignored before.

bloodyriz · January 2018

Yes to both!

borticuscryptic · January 2018

Vanity Pet Tab is something many of us on this side of the game are interested in. But it's a lot of Technology and UI time we've got to prioritize for other game improvements, so for now it's a "maybe someday, we hope" sort of feature.

As for additional R&D storage ... well, just to give you an idea of what we're up against, STO already has the largest character container file footprint of any Cryptic game, by an enormous margin. This includes your captain, their equipment, their costumes, each ship you own, all of its equipment, each Boff you have commissioned, all of their equipment and skills, all of your reputation progress, specializations, accolades, special unlocks, mission completions, doff/admiralty/crafting progress, etc. etc. etc... The list is huge! The amount of character data we store is so monumental, that every single additional bit we add has to be carefully scrutinized to evaluate whether or not it'll cause any appreciable amount of performance degradation. Especially when you multiply those small changes by the number of character containers present on any given map. Typically, when our engineers come up with clever new ways of optimizing this data, we follow that up by expanding inventory spaces in some manner or another, as we know it's a concern for many players. All of that is not to say that we can't do it, or that we won't do it at some point... I'm just trying to inform you about the types of things we have to consider when doing so.

If you are not already aware... with the introduction of Re-Engineering and Salvage, you can take those R&D mats and turn them into items via crafting assignments, then melt them into Salvage to be used for Re-Engineering your items. Salvage takes up no inventory space and has a cap of something ridiculous like 100,000,000,000 (if I recall correctly). So, while this method will consume some time, you can improve the inventory situation for yourself over time by converting most materials into Salvage.

Alternatively: You can just quit hoarding R&D supplies! Toss 'em out an airlock if they're doing literally zero for you, and you have no intention of using or selling them. All they're doing is taking up database space.

borticuscryptic · January 2018

ethereal#4956 wrote: »

So, making an extra tab for pets is that much work? o.O

To do it "right" in a way that won't break our databases? Yep!

rattler2 · January 2018

Nice to know the Devs would like to work on it too.

Please keep us in the loop when you can Bort. With all the vanity pets we've collected over the last 8 years... this would certainly be a nice Quality of Life thing.

As for hoarding R&D mats... I don't see myself stopping anytime soon.

I'll probably just sell off full stacks every once in a while for ECs. Gotta save up for Discovery ships.

davefenestrator · January 2018

What about increasing stack size for R &D mats?

If they are 16-bit integers you could increase the stack size from 999 up to 32,000 without increasing the table size. You could even do this and take away a few slots from the R&D tab at the same time, reducing the number of table columns. That's a win for both players and performance.

rattler2 · January 2018

I'm not sure that's possible. Especially when you gotta consider how we know how much is in a stack. a 5 digit number isn't going to fit in the box.

I'm no coder, but that could potentially mess with all kinds of things. Few years ago it was like every time Cryptic fixed a bug, the Borg in STFs would break. Invisitorps one week, SUPER EPtE Spheres that turn into speeding bullets the next. Oh... and I think at least one time their ability to shield drain was insane.

storules · January 2018

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Vanity Pet Tab is something many of us on this side of the game are interested in. But it's a lot of Technology and UI time we've got to prioritize for other game improvements, so for now it's a "maybe someday, we hope" sort of feature.

As for additional R&D storage ... well, just to give you an idea of what we're up against, STO already has the largest character container file footprint of any Cryptic game, by an enormous margin. This includes your captain, their equipment, their costumes, each ship you own, all of its equipment, each Boff you have commissioned, all of their equipment and skills, all of your reputation progress, specializations, accolades, special unlocks, mission completions, doff/admiralty/crafting progress, etc. etc. etc... The list is huge! The amount of character data we store is so monumental, that every single additional bit we add has to be carefully scrutinized to evaluate whether or not it'll cause any appreciable amount of performance degradation. Especially when you multiply those small changes by the number of character containers present on any given map. Typically, when our engineers come up with clever new ways of optimizing this data, we follow that up by expanding inventory spaces in some manner or another, as we know it's a concern for many players. All of that is not to say that we can't do it, or that we won't do it at some point... I'm just trying to inform you about the types of things we have to consider when doing so.

If you are not already aware... with the introduction of Re-Engineering and Salvage, you can take those R&D mats and turn them into items via crafting assignments, then melt them into Salvage to be used for Re-Engineering your items. Salvage takes up no inventory space and has a cap of something ridiculous like 100,000,000,000 (if I recall correctly). So, while this method will consume some time, you can improve the inventory situation for yourself over time by converting most materials into Salvage.

Alternatively: You can just quit hoarding R&D supplies! Toss 'em out an airlock if they're doing literally zero for you, and you have no intention of using or selling them. All they're doing is taking up database space.

Thanks for the response. It is great to see that it has been discussed by the team at STO.

On suggestion. Why not increase EXISTING limits from bank slot inventory maximum (I think it is now what...12 slots up to seventeen (17) max per character).

Why not increase the MAX per character? The code is already written and should be much easier to satisfy playerbase rather than creating a new tab?

davefenestrator · January 2018

rattler2 wrote: »

I'm not sure that's possible. Especially when you gotta consider how we know how much is in a stack. a 5 digit number isn't going to fit in the box.

I'm no coder, but that could potentially mess with all kinds of things. Few years ago it was like every time Cryptic fixed a bug, the Borg in STFs would break. Invisitorps one week, SUPER EPtE Spheres that turn into speeding bullets the next. Oh... and I think at least one time their ability to shield drain was insane.

Even 9999 would be a 10X space savings. If needed the text display could switch to "1 K" for 1,000 - 1,999, "2 K" for 2,000 - 2,999 and so on. Also if needed the stack splitting could keep the limit of 999 for splitting off part of the stack.

On suggestion. Why not increase EXISTING limits from bank slot inventory maximum (I think it is now what...12 slots up to seventeen (17) max per character).

It sounds like the size of the database records is the problem. Every slot increases that size even if it's shown in the same tab.

gaevsman · January 2018

@borticuscryptic, thanks for the info, what we do need is something to batch-convert items to salvage, like a button that toggle the recycle tab to salvage tab, so you can just press the "salvage" button to your heart desire!, anyway, thanks for dropping by!

baddmoonrizin · January 2018

@borticuscryptic I assume this same reasoning comes into play with increasing the number of character slots as well?

tigeraries · January 2018

borticuscryptic wrote: »

As for additional R&D storage ... well, just to give you an idea of what we're up against, STO already has the largest character container file footprint of any Cryptic game, by an enormous margin.

Should just reduce the number of R&D materials... cut them down from all those quality named parts to 1 for each grade... so instead of X number of common R&D build parts... just have 1.

shadowfirefly00 · January 2018

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Vanity Pet Tab is something many of us on this side of the game are interested in. But it's a lot of Technology and UI time we've got to prioritize for other game improvements, so for now it's a "maybe someday, we hope" sort of feature...

-file footprint explanation redacted-

Indeed, that you've taken the time to explain this is appreciated. I am curious as to how the theoretical performance impact of a vanity pet tab compares to the example given (increasing R&D storage), given that you're not increasing the size of stacks. Alternatively, since you can only have one vanity pet out at a time, perhaps it might be better to have them no longer exist as inventory items; rather, they would populate a pull-down menu somewhere in the character window, and there would be a 'summon/unsummon pet' toggle button which can be placed on one's action bar.

On the subject of pets in general... when opportunity presents itself, would you kindly have a look at the fact of the vanity drones being apparently MIA from the list of NSF project requisitions?

asuran14 · January 2018

I would not mind if they merely added a manner of reclaiming the pets after discarding them without having to re-gain it via a mission, such as reclaiming them via the c/zen-store or dil-store like we can do with other items.

echatty · January 2018

Thank you for the explanation, BMR

baddmoonrizin · January 2018

Huh? I didn't explain anything. That was @borticuscryptic

velqua · January 2018

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Vanity Pet Tab is something many of us on this side of the game are interested in. But it's a lot of Technology and UI time we've got to prioritize for other game improvements, so for now it's a "maybe someday, we hope" sort of feature.

As for additional R&D storage ... well, just to give you an idea of what we're up against, STO already has the largest character container file footprint of any Cryptic game, by an enormous margin. This includes your captain, their equipment, their costumes, each ship you own, all of its equipment, each Boff you have commissioned, all of their equipment and skills, all of your reputation progress, specializations, accolades, special unlocks, mission completions, doff/admiralty/crafting progress, etc. etc. etc... The list is huge! The amount of character data we store is so monumental, that every single additional bit we add has to be carefully scrutinized to evaluate whether or not it'll cause any appreciable amount of performance degradation. Especially when you multiply those small changes by the number of character containers present on any given map. Typically, when our engineers come up with clever new ways of optimizing this data, we follow that up by expanding inventory spaces in some manner or another, as we know it's a concern for many players. All of that is not to say that we can't do it, or that we won't do it at some point... I'm just trying to inform you about the types of things we have to consider when doing so.

If you are not already aware... with the introduction of Re-Engineering and Salvage, you can take those R&D mats and turn them into items via crafting assignments, then melt them into Salvage to be used for Re-Engineering your items. Salvage takes up no inventory space and has a cap of something ridiculous like 100,000,000,000 (if I recall correctly). So, while this method will consume some time, you can improve the inventory situation for yourself over time by converting most materials into Salvage.

Alternatively: You can just quit hoarding R&D supplies! Toss 'em out an airlock if they're doing literally zero for you, and you have no intention of using or selling them. All they're doing is taking up database space.

Borticus, if having a Vanity Pet Tab isn't viable for the database, could Vanity Pets at least be unlockable items that can be reclaimed for "Free" after they have been purchased and deleted? I would also ask the same for the Dilithium Store Kit Modules and Winter/Summer Event items. This way, creating an additional Tab could be avoided while helping players increase their Bank and Inventory space.

disqord · January 2018

I get that some people would really like a pets tab in the inventory, but I don't think it would be useful to enough people. Most people I know would keep 0-4 pets max. Not everyone uses vanity pets.

But everyone uses kit modules. A module inventory space would be much more beneficial to many more people. The only people who don't use modules are people who probably aren't playing the game correctly, and people who don't have more than 5 modules would be greatly encouraged to collect some more without the threat of wasting inventory space.

Combining base class modules, reputations, event stores, lockboxes, fleets, and the universal modules that come from those same methods, you get to over 100 modules! That's easily more than half of the main inventory space on any new character, and anything that takes up the majority of your inventory in comparison to EVERY other type of equipment in the game should absolutely have its own tab for proper storage and management.

salazarraze · January 2018

I think we need more stuff to do with R&D mats. As it is, most people are spilling over with them, even with fleet projects.

felisean · January 2018

borticuscryptic wrote: »

Vanity Pet Tab is something many of us on this side of the game are interested in. But it's a lot of Technology and UI time we've got to prioritize for other game improvements, so for now it's a "maybe someday, we hope" sort of feature.

As for additional R&D storage ... well, just to give you an idea of what we're up against, STO already has the largest character container file footprint of any Cryptic game, by an enormous margin. This includes your captain, their equipment, their costumes, each ship you own, all of its equipment, each Boff you have commissioned, all of their equipment and skills, all of your reputation progress, specializations, accolades, special unlocks, mission completions, doff/admiralty/crafting progress, etc. etc. etc... The list is huge! The amount of character data we store is so monumental, that every single additional bit we add has to be carefully scrutinized to evaluate whether or not it'll cause any appreciable amount of performance degradation. Especially when you multiply those small changes by the number of character containers present on any given map. Typically, when our engineers come up with clever new ways of optimizing this data, we follow that up by expanding inventory spaces in some manner or another, as we know it's a concern for many players. All of that is not to say that we can't do it, or that we won't do it at some point... I'm just trying to inform you about the types of things we have to consider when doing so.

If you are not already aware... with the introduction of Re-Engineering and Salvage, you can take those R&D mats and turn them into items via crafting assignments, then melt them into Salvage to be used for Re-Engineering your items. Salvage takes up no inventory space and has a cap of something ridiculous like 100,000,000,000 (if I recall correctly). So, while this method will consume some time, you can improve the inventory situation for yourself over time by converting most materials into Salvage.

Alternatively: You can just quit hoarding R&D supplies! Toss 'em out an airlock if they're doing literally zero for you, and you have no intention of using or selling them. All they're doing is taking up database space.

@borticuscryptic
would it be possible to increase the stack size from some items? devices as example to at least 100 per stack, maybe crafting materials to 9999 or something like that. that would solve (at least for me) a lot of problems with the inventory. In addition, it would be awesome if we could stack all trait boxes of the same type (honored dead shiptrait would be a example)

where2r1 · January 2018

I admit it, I am a STO hoarder.

I will have to check to see if the TRIBBLE I got from leveling up rep can be turned into salvage. It has been sitting in the bank and inventory slots on all my characters for years. And storing a lot of stuff on inactive ships and BOFFs I never use for anything but storage.

And I don't really think I need 30 stacks of Lohlunat Tokens nor all those Winter Ornaments. I don't know why I am keeping stacks and stacks of old Lock Boxes....I am never going to open them. Do people buy those?

I, also, tend to collect and keep things I think look "pretty"....wanna see my stock pile of Dosi Rotgut? And WW Recipe foods? (Actually started saving the Dosi for the day we would need it for, I think, it was for unlocking the bartender, or something in the Starbase...but our bartender is unlocked.)

And I hate, hate, hate crafting, absolutely hate it. So, not sure why I am OCD about saving each and every component and R&D mat I have ever came across on all 7 of my characters. I guess, I should make more BOFF Specialization Training Manuals....those don't take that much time. I am trimming down the number of BOFFs I own. Although, now all the BOFFs are getting more and more training so not sure that is actually trimming down any character's data.

duncanidaho11 · January 2018

salazarraze wrote: »

I think we need more stuff to do with R&D mats. As it is, most people are spilling over with them, even with fleet projects.

Good news! You can salvage miscellaneous crafted gear. So the common materials (for which it isn't particularly profitable to turn into tech upgrades to sell on the exchange) can be used to create Mk II gear which you can immediately break down for re-engineering other gear.

URGENTLY NEEDED ***More R&D TABS or PET tabs

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