4Game

I know I'm beating the dust off the horse's skeleton at this point buuuut I'm gonna continue kicking anyway.

Quick TLDR at bottom to make up for this wall of text lol

You'd think that if a Type-9 can haul 700 tons of literal shit, it would also be capable of hauling 700 tons of my own modules. Or at least modules that would otherwise fit in that-sized internal cargo slot. Or at the very least, a cargo rack specifically designed to haul modules. (And if we're being honest, you should be able to haul any-fucking-thing that would fit in that cargo space.)

As someone who takes a 60LY Krait Phantom to make engineering runs, it's certainly not game-breaking, but boy is it really annoying. Say you want to engineer a size 4 hardpoint. You must take a ship that has a size 4 hardpoint slot, right? That limits you to five ships, four of which have jump capabilities in the "ass" range. [Seriously, I can tap my phone IRL a few times and have a whole car delivered to my driveway. 3308 and I can't even place an order for an engineered module? Even when the engineers themselves sell the module I want?? Like dude, I'd pay a massive premium on the shipping alone. But that warrants a discussion of its own]

Now hear me out: imagine a Krait or Python. Imagine having cargo racks specialized to hold modules. Like, hello?? I take this 35LY laden Python, load it up with modules for another ship, make a run to every engineer I need, and end up back home with a fully engineered ship of my choosing (with experimentals).

And that's just an example with engineering.

The current system is so much more work than it should be and beyond that, it really shouldn't make sense to anyone who has ever seen, I don't know, a pickup truck? Or any vehicle for that matter? Isn't this the sole purpose of cars having a trunk in the first place? Imagine a magical barrier strictly allowing you to only put specific items in your trunk. No, really imagine that. Imagine your car's trunk accepting groceries but nothing else. Assuming you'd buy that car in the first place, wouldn't that still just piss you all the hell off??

I'm no game dev so someone please tell me if I'm wrong, but isn't this an easy solution? All modules are already assigned a slot size. The game already has some sort of functionality to insert modules inside other modules (re: SRV/SLF bays). And, well, the game already has "cargo racks". Genuine question: is it really difficult to add a new set of cargo racks with a similar module-in-module functionality? Hit it with the ol' CTRL + C, CTRL + V a couple times. Do we really have to ask for our trunks to be more useful? How do you make literal empty cargo space less useful in the first place?!

And I'm not saying "Why wasn't the game made my specific way?" It's more of a "Who the hell designed this to be so overly-complicated?" As far as I'm aware, modules and commodities have been a thing in the game since its inception, right? Or at least at launch? Which implies the same for the idea of only being able to haul commodities. Later implementation of engineers clearly proved just how consequential that would be. Hell, module storage, fleet carriers, powerplay, CG rewards, Guardian tech, etc. all shows how deeply rooted this one simple thing is. "Hi, I'm here to pick up my size 3 module reward. What's that? You're telling me it won't fit in the empty ASP-sized cargo bays of my Anaconda? oh…"

Also I want to mention that being able to transfer module/ships wasn't a bad or useless feature; it's actually very convenient. Of course it does have its own slightly irritating limitations but the largest flaw by far is that it was a step in the wrong direction. More menus and less gameplay is not fun. Module transfer might be convenient, but it doesn't address the core issue here. It's not even really about being able to load up modules in a cargo rack. It's about restricting player autonomy when there doesn't seem like a good reason to. So, am I genuinely concerned that the gameplay loop is flawed or am I mad that I want to be able to haul more than commodities and fdev said 'no' for no good reason? Idk does a car that only holds groceries make any sense whatsoever? lol

TLDR: For fuck's sake fdev, give us cargo racks that can hold modules.

Anyway, I felt like ranting into the void today. Interested to hear anyone else's thoughts/ideas/objections too. Hope everyone has an awesome rest of your day 🙂