Sort asteroid chunks to the bottom of hub inventory

[Tinyboss]

TL;DR

Put asteroid chunks at the end, so that adding and removing them doesn't make other items jump around.

What?

I suggest moving all the asteroid chunks the bottom of the hub inventory list. When using the hub to store them, the locations of every item sorted after them in the inventory are constantly jumping around, which interferes with selecting items to be dropped to the surface.

Edit: A more general solution that would work even for mods that add new chunks, would be to sort in decreasing order of stack size. I want to change my suggestion to that.

Why?

I can solve the problem myself for every other item type that I put in and take out of the hub. For example, instead of using circuits to keep 250 iron ore in the hub, I configure it for 225, so the normal in/out traffic while at the desired level does not affect the number of stacks.

But since asteroid chunks only stack to 1, there's nothing we can do. Unless storing chunks in the hub is a weird technique that's not meant to be used, this or some other solution should be implemented.

[BlueTemplar]

(Another solution could be to allow filtering that inventory, so that you can force a number of chunks to be at specific spots... like the end for instance.)

[dragon_gawain]

Being able to filter the hub inventory would be good for other things as well, such as reserving some space for biter eggs and promethium packs in my shattered planet ship so that the influx of shards doesn’t clog up everything, forcing me to empty some slots by some means. (And yes, I know belts are denser storage for chunks, but greed always gets the better of me and whispers ‘but what if you stuff an extra 300 chunks into that space that your storage belt can’t get to…’)

[Tinyboss]

(Another solution could be to allow filtering that inventory, so that you can force a number of chunks to be at specific spots... like the end for instance.)

Being able to filter the hub inventory would be good for other things as well...

It could have surprising interactions with adding/removing cargo bays, though. If I have my chunks filtered to the bottom, and I decide I want to move a cargo bay over a couple of tiles, do my filters get lost?

[dragon_gawain]

One implementation would be that you cannot remove cargo bays such that you would have fewer available slots than filtered slots (similar to how if there's stuff in the cargo bays you can't pick them up).

I can see how that can lead to frustrations, but from a mechanical point of view, it would work..

Probably not the best solution, but it is asolution to that problem.

[BlueTemplar]

Yes, those filter slots would be 'lost' (and items kicked out of these slots) until you get these inventory spaces back, just like with filtered slots in personal inventory.

It's not like there's a good reason to remove cargo bays unless you're in the process of rebuilding the platform ?

[Tinyboss]

I rearrange my ships pretty frequently! One of my ships has a ton of cargo room, more than I really need. So if I decide to remove a bay and not replace it, either I lose my filters, or I have to manually copy them to what will become the end of my inventory. And I use quality cargo bays, so there's not an even multiple of 10 slots from each, so I would have to actually count how far I have to move this big block of filters. Which could be 100 or more on a large platform.

I use a constant combinator to set how many chunks I want of each kind. If I want to change it up, now I have to change the combinator *and* the filters. And I still need the combinator even if I have filters, because otherwise I can't tell the collectors which kinds of chunks to grab.

No, filters are not a solution to this problem. I'm not saying they wouldn't be useful on their own, but not for this.

[BlueTemplar]

Also, storing chinks in the hub seems to be kind of a trap anyway,
(as mentioned by Tinyboss : «Unless storing chunks in the hub is a weird technique that's not meant to be used»),
since I made a slightly different spaceship design that doesn't make them go through the hub (and doesn't make ammo go through a belt),
both the survivability and the available cargo space of my ship improved by a lot !

[Tinyboss]

Also, storing chinks in the hub seems to be kind of a trap anyway,
(as mentioned by Tinyboss : «Unless storing chunks in the hub is a weird technique that's not meant to be used»),
since I made a slightly different spaceship design that doesn't make them go through the hub (and doesn't make ammo go through a belt),
both the survivability and the available cargo space of my ship improved by a lot !

No argument with anything you said, but the advantages you mention would still be relevant if my suggestion were adopted.

Even if hub storage is a noob trap, it should be discouraged by in-game considerations, like yours, and not by UI difficulties.

[BlueTemplar]

(To be fair my main issue was that I was long-storing chunks only in the hub, because the belt was only pass-through for them, but that seems to be an easy mistake to make when trying to keep logical conditions to a minimum ?)