Inventory Management Suggestion - Warehouse Rack Ordering

[BellePullman]

Prerequisites

• [x] I am running the latest alpha version of MineColonies and Structurize for my Minecraft version.
• [x] I checked the MineColonies/Structurize wiki and made sure my issue is not covered there.
• [x] I made sure that this issue is not a duplicate of any existing issue.

Context

• Minecraft Version: 1.16.3
• MineColonies Version: 0.13.386
• Structurize Version: 0.13.92

Problem description

Problem - the "Sort" feature in the Warehouse resets every time the game is loaded, making it impossible to guess where items are without constant use of the "search" feature.

There is clearly an order in which the items in the Warehouse are sorted - things always appear in the same order, but which rack they appear in seems to be random. The longer I play, the more familiar I am with the order of items, but if the thing I am looking for is not in this rack but "spilled over" into the next rack, I have no idea where that would be. So the proposal is for a logical virtual numbering system from the player's perspective -predicable when familiar with the game.

It seems there are multiple lists of items - Structurize blocks are all stored together, Redstone items all group, I always seem to have space following rails, saddles and boats which suggests they might be the end of a list. It would be super useful if each list always started in the same racks - again, to make it predictable. I can see there are issues with assigning racks to certain types of items - what happens when the space dedicated to "Wood" is overflowing but there is empty space in the "Seeds" area - I would not ask for anything that specific and detailed. And the rack ordering would not be consistent between levels 3 and 4 for example, with the addition of extra racks. But if the storage sorting could be made consistent and predictable, it would save a lot of unrewarding time opening racks.

Notes or related things

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[Dragnier]

Perhaps give warehouse racks a menu tab with a dropdown to pick which lists sort where, including an overflow catch-all option? Then the sort could be customized by each player as they like.

Further, an eject / no-store feature where the player can pick either individual items or everything from an entire mod to be on a no-store list where anything from that list gets sent to the player's postbox instead of being kept taking up space in the warehouse.

[Thodor12]

The primary issue with this, if you set up your configuration in such a way that certain items cannot be sorted (not enough overflow space, or none at all) then what happens?

Sorting already is as predictable as it possibly could be, it all depends on how many racks are available and what the size of the racks is.

I'm not sure if adding any kind of manual filter is a good idea, given that it could create even more issues (sorting not being able to work at all) if no overflow space is left.

[Dragnier]

That's where you could utilize the eject feature as well. Eject anything overflowing beyond rack overflow capacity to the postbox as well.

I only commented because I hit sort for the first time and absolutely nothing makes sense where it went. Cobble, of which I have a metric ton, went to racks on all three levels of the current level 3 shire warehouse instead of all being together. There's glass with wood, coal with bows and doors/plates and apples on one rack, wood stairs and blocks of quartz with vines and glass panes on another. Absolutely no sense.

[Thodor12]

Any kind of eject/auto cleanup feature from the warehouse has been consistently denied since we want players to be responsible for cleaning up the warehouse.

[Dragnier]

That's fair. I was just underwhelmed by the lack of actual grouping. It was more sorted before I hit sort. I just don't get why cobble literally went on three different racks nowhere near each other. Or why carrots and potatoes wound up with nether bricks on the same rack.

[Talyda]

100% agree with you on that. It makes no sense. I know it sorts to creative menu, or something like that, but where it actually puts stuff in the warehouse makes no sense as a player. Must be something to do with when the racks were placed? Somehow it sees the ones on the different levels as related? It's never made sense to me. And the fact that stuff moves when you hit sort again a while later makes even less sense. Thank goodness for the search box!

[Dragnier]

What if you could hire a "Warehouse Manager" position and that made the warehouse block act like other storage systems where you could just search it and pull it out directly? As in, the manager is actually fetching things for you on the spot.

Perhaps with stack limit per level per day similar to the couriers? That way you'd still have the management by the player before the position is filled ( I'm thinking only hire-able from level 2 onward ) as well as after you run out of stacks pulled per day where you'd have to highlight and fetch yourself.

[Thodor12]

If the root issue is not being able to find items then I'd rather look at doing something like that yeah, possibly not even having to require a worker

[Dragnier]

Honestly, if it worked a bit like the RF Tools Storage Scanner, that'd probably be both feasible and not too far out of context with the rest of Minecolonies. Some people already use that specifically for this, but it would be nice not to need an external mod.