Bigger containers / More House Space

[hitoshirenu]

Really now, 4x4 for a cabin's inside? That's just painful. I'd settle for even 7x7, maybe 6x6, but 4x4 hurts me.

Anyways, in terms of containers, the biggest thing we get so far is the Chest. The chest is a 6x6 container (36 slots), and doesn't take up too much room. What I propose is a bigger chest, maybe two of them, using higher-grade metals and more boards. Here's my examples.

Large Chest
10 Boards
5 Wrought Iron Bars
Inventory Space: 8x8 (64 Slots)
Visual: A large chest bearing a more "fancy" look, but big enough to where it looks like it can eat a couple chests.

Grand Chest
20 Boards
3 Steel Bars
Inventory Space: 10x10 (100 Slots)
Visual: A very fancy-looking chest, possibly adorned in gems, maybe gold lining.

Vault (Note: Maybe not until locks are implemented =P)
10 Cast Iron Bars
8 Wrought Iron Bars
3 Steel Bars
Inventory Space: 12x12 (144 Slots)
Lock Feature: 3 or 4-Digit code
Visual: A LARGE vault with a spin-dial on it.

That's all I can think about for now. People, feel free to add on to this! Or give criticism. Or both! O_O!

[Jfloyd]

Those are amazing ideas. I could imagine the vault being maybe even hidden by something ;D

[KoE]

One important thing - we need to distinguish between 'mobile' storage and non-mobile storage. Currently, you can move at a fair speed with 144 inventory slots (not including your own personal inventory) using 4 chests and a cart. I think this is about right - anything larger than the current chest should be non-cartable, or pending a reimplementation, perhaps taking up multiple slots. (I like the idea of carting a single, secure, fairly large vault around.)

I also think we should keep the single-player inventory space down somewhat to encourage actual multi-person caravans, so new vehicles(say, a wagon or something) should probably either require two people to handle properly or only give a fairly modest increase in carrying capacity. (Say 6 vs the current 4)

Another idea for trading in bulk would be to allow for special single-item-type only containers that hold more stuff, but obviously only allow certain items. These should be prohibitively expensive so as to avoid them being used as the de facto storage for their type of item so that the generic types don't become invalidated, and perhaps should wear out (because otherwise there'd eventually be enough bloat that they would become the de facto storage anyway).

Personally, I like the idea of a single non-movable chest (or only movable by lifting or as a single item in a cart) of an appreciably bigger size, serving as a village stockpile item. Anything hugely bigger seems a bit too large for me. Vault items should also come in varying sizes - perhaps a 4x4 (16 spaces) one that's expensive but reasonably affordable for personal use. Larger ones (perhaps 6x6 - movable - and 8x8 - non-movable or singularly movable) should be quite expensive to encourage their use as community vaults.

Some thoughts on locks;

I think there should be two types: 'key' locks that require lockpicking and coded locks that require safecracking. Key locks would be progressively more difficult to pick, but one successful roll means you're in. These would only be placeable on chests, with the best locks only able to go on larger chests (which gives some value to using a larger chest that takes up more space in a cart despite decreased inventory space).

Coded locks can be opened in one of two ways; learn the code, or make several rolls to guess the combination one piece at a time. This would make coded locks require much more time, but have a small chance to completely fail if a thief gets his hands on the combination through some other manner.

As for housing size increases - I'm all for them. The cabin's alright as it is, but more options would be very nice. Rectangular houses are something I'd really like to see, too.

So to give a rough summary of what I think would be neat, in your format;

Wagon (cart-like object)
Several boards (unsure how many)
Several wood blocks
Some iron - cast or wrought, not sure.
Team of animals (obviously requires some other updates)
Linen cloth (makes that roof-thingie you think of when you think of a covered wagon. Perhaps helps against bad weather if that's ever implemented)
Special: Allows multiple people to ride on it
Driver (self explanatory)
Shotgun (sits beside driver; can fire bow freely)
Passengers (each one takes up an inventory slot? Or perhaps can accommodate a small number of passengers in addition to cargo)
Inventory: 3x2 containers

Personal Safe
Iron (definitely some wrought), maybe a single unit of steel
Inventory: 4x4
Lock: Code, relatively easy to bypass
Visual: A vault about the size of a chest with a dial on it.

Large Safe
Iron of varying types plus steel
Inventory: 6x6
Lock: Code, somewhat difficult to bypass
Visual: A vault that takes up about as much space as a straw basket, maybe a bit more.

Bank Vault
As the vault in the original post.

A quick comparison of these theoretical inventory objects with inventory size, cart-space required, total cart-able inventory size, and security;
(I assume 'cart inventory' means using exclusively objects of that type)

Code: Select all

Name      / Inventory / Cart Space  / Cart Inventory/ Security         
Chest     |  6x6 (36) |    1 space  |    144 slots  | Low-quality mechanical
L. Chest  |  8x8 (64) |  2x1 space  |    128 slots  | High-quality mechanical
P. Vault  |  4x4 (16) |    1 space  |    84 slots   | Med-quality short code
L. Vault  |  6x6 (36) |  2x1 space  |    72 slots   | High-quality short code / Med-quality long code
B. Vault  |  8x8 (64) |  2x2 space  |    64 slots   | High-quality long code

Looking at it now that I'm done, I like the juxtaposition of chests vs vaults - your vaults are substantially more secure at the cost of a the majority of your maximum inventory. However getting the best vault seems like it could be a no brainer - the loss of 8 inventory slots for a big boost in security might be a little much. The chests actually suffer from the same deal percentage-wise, and it's still 'only' 16 inventory slots, so that might could use further consideration.

Another idea is the concept of lock degradation - when picked, a lock takes damage and will eventually become useless (which naturally encourages making new locks). Perhaps higher-value locks, being more delicate mechanisms, actually have less HP - they're more likely to stop a single attack, but won't stand up against an onslaught. This would require some way to keep thieves from just smashing all the way through the lock's HP in one go, though.

Anyway, I know this was long-winded, but I tend to get like this shortly before I go to bed. Feel free to criticize the ideas or build on them as you see fit.

[Peter]

I wanted to say... I really like the idea of combination locks; It's easy to tell a lot of friends the code, it's POSSIBLE but far from likely that someone could break in...

One necessity would be that entering a combo should take several seconds, so that it would be difficult for a script to break it.