Star Citizen is Building a Better Inventory System

Star Citizen is Building a Better Inventory System that is going to massively effect the way you play the game… so what do we have and what are the plans for the Inventory Feature?

Currently in Star Citizen we have a split inventory and loadout.

The PMA (Personal Manager App) allows us to equip items, weapons, armor and clothing through the mobiGlas. You are able to freely change into any armor & gear at anytime from any you own. Armor and weapons you have equipped are mostly physicalized.

There is the PIS (Personal Inventory System) that is separate to that which enables you to store small harvestables, mineables & food items. The amount you can store is determined by your armor, some of which have lots of storage with an integrated backpack.

This system has a very basic UI and the items follow the armor they are in.

Starting or at least currently planned with Alpha 3.14, Star Citizen is moving towards a massive change in the way inventory works.

The first step is Personal & Local Inventory… you’ll have an updated UI (User Interface) but No longer will you have access to all your items and equipment to change into where-ever you are as they move away from the PMA. Your weapons and armor will have to be stored. Ships, Local Hangars, Habs and external boxes as well as the Player will be able to have items stored there and moved between them. So you may have some items at the Lorville Hangars, some on your Mercury Star Runner… some items on you. You’ll only be able to interact with nearby local inventories. You’ll be able to put armor on by dragging and dropping or interacting with it. You will be limited by both weight and volume in what you can carry.

They are building an asset manager app to track/log the location of your items, ships and Vehicles too.

Planned for Alpha 3.16 at the end of the year there are new lockers and storage that’s supported by local inventory allowing for a consistent way to store clothes, armor, and items in a physicalized state as well as a more robust and tactile method of storing items on shelves and attachment surfaces.  Expect to see the storing of EVA suits in appropriate containers that then visualize it. You’ll see gear stowed in a variety of ways and places on ships and habs BUT this is likely going to lead to lots more internal customization options for ships and habs.

They want to have specific storage containers for certain items and Physical Inventory and Storage where possible.

Lockers, GunWracks, eventually Cargo Containers that can contain multiple physical interactable items like a load of multitools that you could take out and use… it’s directly related to cargo improvements, looting of ships and structures, looting of bodies, salvage and the economy too.

All of this coming together is what the current plans are for the inventory… they want a partially physicalized inventory that shows what equipment you have on you, what’s around you and what’s potentially functional and useful to you BUT also not have everything visible to the player at all times, there are still going to be backpacks and storage containers BUT these are going to have much more realistic limits than other games.

And we will see player owned habs for their storage needs.

Will we see this system bed used for kitchens and food storage? Maybe? CI (Cloud Imperium) have yet to talk about the details of food, cooking and kitchens in the terms of physicalization of food storage… though some ships obviously have prep areas and kitchen already.