1. If you're looking for help-related things (for example, the key rebinding tutorial), please check the FAQ and Q&A forum! A lot of the stickies from this forum have been moved there to clean up space.
    Dismiss Notice

Storage by Sight (a guide for the packrats)

Discussion in 'Starbound Discussion' started by M_Sipher, Feb 4, 2016.

Tags:
  1. M_Sipher

    M_Sipher Oxygen Tank

    (An updated version of an old post, made into its own thread for easy recollection/linking.)

    If you're like me and I know I am, you bought this game to GET STUFF. And there's a ton of stuff to get. Even if you're not that big a packrat, sorting your crafting materials and the like can result in you not being 100% what's stored in what. Sure, you can make signs, but why do that when there's a simpler way?

    Visual cues are your best friend in the world when it comes to storage. The more you can do to see at a glance what is in your storage BEFORE you open it up, the easier a time you'll have. There's two ways to do this.

    1) Keep different items stored in different rooms by theme.

    2) Make use of the many, many different storage devices by matching the contents to the look of the storage device.


    upload_2016-2-4_4-9-13.png

    This is my "home stuff" storage. Well, not ALL of it. A few things are in other rooms, we'll get to those.

    The big right side is tile storage, where I use a "sample" tile as flooring for each cabinet to show what general type of tiles you find inside. I tend to stick to four different tiles per locker, letting me store 8000 tiles of any given type, though for some stuff like multicolored dirt or sand, I'll stuff more in. Really easy to pick out what I want. And yeah, lots of room to expand.

    To the left is furniture and decor. Upper section is mostly race-specific: each race's stuff goes in a container from said race's stuff. The lower section is mostly from Frogg Furnishings, using whatever thematic storage devices fit best if that set lacks a storage device (for reasons that baffle me).
    The tech chests up top-left contain lights. Green are "natural" (fire and bio-luminescence) and blue are electrical. (I've since expanded the shelves to three chests each.)
    Right end is the more generic furniture, with generic storage in the big chest, random stuff in the crates.
    The wall locker stores all the wiring components.

    Bottom-left is for special biome furniture and whatnot, obviously sorted with that biome's special chest (and some spare materials to make them just in case).

    And yeah, it's a little scattered, but that's a result of the original piecemeal-then-expanded development. Next version'll be bigger and better-sorted.

    upload_2016-2-4_4-31-7.png

    Weapon storage. I've inteded to do more signwork but let that slide. Besides, those are more for show anwyway, as these are sorted into floors based on what's inside, another way to do it even with keeping a single storage device.
    Top is melee weapons, left side blades (from smallest to biggest and special-biome), right side axes, hammers, spears and staves.
    Middle-left is shields. Right has throwables in one, then trap-tiles.
    Bottom floor is the projectile-throwers, with bows/crossbows at top left through increasingly-bigger guns up to the rocket & grenade launchers.
    The signs, by the way, cycle through icons of what's inside (with the Business Ends pointing in the direction of the lockers) and provide the room's light.

    upload_2016-2-4_4-39-40.png

    My workshop materials room, which will very definitely be bigger once the next major Stable update drops, but again, you get the idea. Right set of chests are processed metal bars, starting with common Copper and Silver (Rust chest at bottom) then proceeding in tier up to Violium (purple) Aegisalt (green) and Rubium (red) and their alloys, two types of ore per chest, plus Diamonds. (Man I wish you could make a chest out of every metal type.)

    Left side is all mnemonic. Top Ice Chest holds water & healing water. Tar Chest has other liquids like oil.
    Stone Chest has rock tiles. Glow Chest... obvious. Primitive chest has various unprocessed woods.
    Toxic Chest has coal, Toxic Waste, etc. Bone Chest has Bone obviously, but also "animal"-based drops (I've since expanded with a Flesh Chest as well specifically for the unique-monster "organic" drops). Spring has most other plant matters.
    Tech Chest has the electronics components. Wood has stuff like string, fabric, paper, non-"tech" tech. Rainbow has... well, at this point mostly shiny rocks that are no longer used, like Solarium. Eh.

    upload_2016-2-4_4-52-24.png

    Armor storage runs on a similar principle, but sadly it's a little trickier due to less "dresser" options. Bottom floor has the race-tied stuff, with armor in the dressers and "clothes" in the chests just above. Sadly, only the Apex dresser has enough slots to contain every piece of their armor (CF should fix that!). Though as of the current build, it's not like you can really buy non-armor clothes, so maybe all the helmets go in there. I dunno, we'll see what the next build brings.
    Top floor is the Vanities. The chests up top are "solo" hats & back gear, and thankfully there's more thematic options there. For full sets of Vanity Armor though? ...not so much. But the "normal" dressers are "costumes", the Royal dressers have more actual clothes, the Lunar Lockers have work outfits, etc. I try.

    upload_2016-2-4_5-4-14.png

    All the food and such goes here. The cooler has ingredients on the bottom row, finished dishes up top, sorting by theme. The Ice Chests have Healing Water in one, various-sized Snowballs in the other (because). The Ice Machine is for meats. The fridges next have "alien" plants (right), Earth fruits & veg (middle) and Earth grains & misc (left).
    The top fridges are just sorted by vague type (drinks, desserts, etc).
    In the kitchen itself I've got the various kitchen furniture/storage regardless of race. This saves room in the lower furniture storage area.

    upload_2016-2-4_5-11-44.png

    The Library, for extra Lorebooks and Blueprints. By now I think you should know how this works. The middle-right cases are for Lorebooks/disks from boss missions and the like.

    upload_2016-2-4_5-10-12.png

    And finally, my ship's storage section, where I drop off the goods from my travels, sorting them so when I eventually return home (I tend to hit a whole system in one go) I can grab all the _____ at once. I'll let you suss out what goes in what in the right room.
    Left room is for tiles (crates) sorted by vague type, and the lockers are for decor items.

    This isn't EVERYTHING, of course. If i'm working on a big building project that needs a lot of tiles and isn't terribly close to my main storage, I'll make a temporary second storage area closeby with dedicated tile storage in addition to what's in the main. Also, "dungeon" decor items (and weapons) I store in a "Danger Museum" deeper underground, and some items I deem "too dangerous" goes in a special "Deep Storage" unit at core-level, but no real need to show those here. Just wanted to put out some examples of ways to sort the tons of crap you can collect in this game without resorting to making a million signs to separate the million same storage devices.

    Hope this helps!
     

    Attached Files:

    Last edited: Feb 4, 2016
  2. Thalant

    Thalant Zero Gravity Genie

    Man... you... you are amazing. Simply as that. You deserve that Architect Medal, that's for sure.
    This guide is gonna help a lot to completionists and item collectors who whant to store LOTS of stuff. Not for me, anyway, since I don't focus on that and I'm good just with a few chests with signs. But maybe one day I'll want to follow the collector's way, and when that day comes, I'll be back here again.
     
  3. Tamorr

    Tamorr Supernova

    I have to say you are pretty well at doing this. Have not gotten around to doing something like this myself, but that is because I am awaiting the next patch; in which I more likely will start anew another character.

    Good reference and idea material to use as guidelines, like the last time you showcased the way you go about doing the sorting. I really admire the coordination. :nuruawe:
     
  4. MrVauxs

    MrVauxs Giant Laser Beams

    It's... perfect....!!!
     

Share This Page