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[Star Weaver]

I've been thinking about the mechanics of changing inventory size; specifically, I have no idea how items get selected to get dumped when a storage unit is detached or destroyed. Is it random?

In any case, I was thinking it would be nice to be able to mark only four items as 'being in cogmind's base inventory' in some way, e.g., these are the ones that you'll keep no matter what happens, even if you use the emergency jettison button and lose everything else.

[Kyzrati]

I've thought about this, especially recently now that you can drop any Storage Unit in Alpha 4, regardless of inventory state...

It's not currently 100% random, but I believe it should be. In fact, right now you can somewhat control what drops--dropped items are always taken from the end of your inventory list, so you can control what drops via sort commands.

Inventory manipulation is not detailed enough to make controlling this very feasible without being fiddly, so it's something I don't want to add. The result may seem sort of "game-y", but I like that there's less control of that aspect, a sort of price to pay for dropping a unit haphazardly, especially now that storage units are so incredibly protected from destruction--huge integrity, low coverage (also against logic), immune to rejection, saboteurs, critical hits, and most other negative effects... If you must have the control in a given situation, spend the little extra time to drop them manually (which also costs game time, so it has a real cost associated with it).

I can see how this matters even more for those of you running around with massive inventories, now that we have a pretty extreme "go naked" command. Though really, if you're going to truly drop almost everything I would assume this isn't a situation where you're carrying a lot of stuff to begin with--or at least these two situations will rarely coincide.

[Adraius]

With a full combat build, the moment you run completely out of either a) weapons or b) power sources, you generally don't have any choice except to immediately go naked.  If you didn't have a well-balanced inventory or took a number of unlucky hits/crits, that can involve dropping a LOT of items.  Now, this circumstance has become much rarer with the advent of multi-Hcp. Storage play, but when storage sizes become more constricted I expect to occasionally be going naked more often.

Ideally, I think being able to select a few items to keep would be a good addition, as comebacks are one of the most challenging and exciting parts of Cogmind.  That said, the new 'drop everything' is a completely free action, so it's not unreasonable to ask the player to spend a few turns picking what they want out of the wreckage afterwards if they value those items enough.

tl;dr I think being able to designate items to keep would be a good idea in a vacuum, but the new free-action drop all command already minimizes the problem, and I am not blind to the difficultly of smoothly integrating such a feature into the UI.

[Kyzrati]

tl;dr I think being able to designate items to keep would be a good idea in a vacuum, but the new free-action drop all command already minimizes the problem, and I am not blind to the difficultly of smoothly integrating such a feature into the UI.

This.

Also, it will require more playtesting, and input from players other than myself, but (tangential to this discussion) I believe another change has had a rather significant effect on the rate of attrition for combat builds--protection from criticals for items that aren't below 50% integrity. Sure you can still make enough tactical mistakes that put you in a weaponless bind (power is less essential unless you're relying on thermal/EM), but these situations will form less suddenly now, giving you more of a chance to adjust your tactics on the fly if necessary.

I'm also open to lowering the 50% threshold even further if this is proven to help the situation without making the game too easy. As you point out, losing parts and having to make a comeback is an exciting and integral part of the game.