Odyssey materials cap issues (and how to solve it)

[sfried]

I regularly raid settlements, and right now I keep hitting my 1000 unit goods/assets allocation on a regular basis. The problem is that some materials are harder to come by then others, so I would find myself with, say, a ton of graphene collected in one run, only for my ship to tell me I need to let go of it to make room for some of the more important checmical components.

Right now, the only solution is to buy and own a fleet carrier in order to dump the excess goods, but not only is it time consuming and wasteful, but I don't play Elite Dangerous frequently enough to justify paying for upkeep.

Some have proposed Odyssey materials should adopt the graded system for materials, but I was thinking of other, more permanent solutions to the idea of excess materials, both for Odyssey and pre-Odyssey crafting: Planetary lockers. Think of these as storage banks, but they pretty much act like the outfitting in Elite Dangerous as it currently functions right now. A settlement (provided you are allied with it, this idea pending) can hold your excess materials for you. It would be then possible to ship those materials to any other available settlement you are able to land for a flat fee. The gist is that the entire locker itself will be sent to your location, meaning your entire cache has to be moved all at once. This is a better alternative to people who do not want to purchase carriers for their upkeep and cost, while still being able to jump quite a distance outside the bubble.

Much like ports with outfitting, it will be limited to inhabited systems with settlements, though lockers themselves won't be limitted to just settlements (for the sake of people still stuck on Horizon). Lockers can actually be moved to and from various space docks as well. Being able to access it on-foot while in a dock is as easy as going up to a terminal (to handle Odyssey materials as opposed to pre-Odyssey meterials).

 

[Kzak]

Agreed, a raised material cap (1000 of each item instead of 1000 total for materials, for example), would go a long way. But until then, fleet carriers is the only way to store materials that aren't on your ship. 260M Cr/year for a standard non-upgraded carrier. You can make that in 2-3 hours with an AX missile Titan-bomber, for example, without having it engineered to the gills. That, or join the AXI anti-xeno group and participate in fighting the Thargoids.

 

[HRDiagram]

What I normally do is go to a bar and convert the materials into those with a higher conversion rate, so I reduce the quantities by mostly storing the most valuable ones.
Obviously, this doesn't work for goods or data but, generally, they don't fill as quickly as the materials.

But yes, I agree with the sentiment: more storage space would be welcome.

 

[sfried]

Agreed, a raised material cap (1000 of each item instead of 1000 total for materials, for example), would go a long way. But until then, fleet carriers is the only way to store materials that aren't on your ship. 260M Cr/year for a standard non-upgraded carrier. You can make that in 2-3 hours with an AX missile Titan-bomber, for example, without having it engineered to the gills. That, or join the AXI anti-xeno group and participate in fighting the Thargoids.

Doing AXI also isn’t a viable solution for those avoiding any Tharg contact, or who spends most of the time doing more engagement with the humans and has the only form of any extraterrestrial contact as exobiology. AXI anti-xeno also requires investment in engineering, engineering which, incidentally enough, requires materials…

Even with traders and bar tenders, I still feel pilots definitely need a permanent “storage stash” of some sort for their belongings, especially for such a game like Elite: Dangerous, where there is definitely a lot to collect.

 

[metatheurgist]

Graphene is the most important Chemical component. It's the one worth the most and can be traded down for everything else. If you're dropping it for other chemicals you're shortchanging yourself.

The 1000 limit is inconvenient but not overly so. The trick is to upgrade a whole range of gear simultaneously so you're always using something up.

Another thing some like to do is just trade everything up to the one component that is the highest value in each category. Graphene, microelectrodes, weapon components.