About every so often I'll be fighting, and accidently run across some scrap metal or whatever. The thought occured to me that an option to toggle your cargo bay open/closed might be handy.

Ilike

I had this exact thought last night while doing the tycorps in hollow roid thing... excellent idea.

some types of items like food, are very light. if you will fill up your cargo bay ahead of time, you won't have to worry about running over anything heavy.

food 20kg 1cu
empty cargo crates 50kg 6cu
free power cell 100kg 3cu
sedina chocolates 15kg 1cu

Fair point, but an in-flight option would be nice.

Hmmm...

I'm not gonna deny that it's happened to you, but in my 2.5+ years of VO I don't think I've ever accidentally picked up cargo (or at least, I haven't accidentally picked it up in a fight and then lost because of it...)

But it still may be good. The only downside I see is the bazillion of n00b's screaming "WHY CANT I PICK UP CARGO!!?!???!???!"

That's a downside??

i constantly pick up cargo when i dont want to.

on the other hand, weither the ship is full (or cargo bay would be closed), it would be more realistic that cargo crates make a clunk sound when hitting the hull, rather than simply vapor through.

I'm sure the widgets are beamed aboard. The backstory mentions something about limited matter transfering beams, or something.

What about making cargo pickup a skill based action by manually having to target the cargo with a beam, then adjust beam as it comes onboard etc ... would make it more challenging.

What about k.i.s.s.

Fookin' mini-gamers.

No to manually having to pick up cargo.. bad bad BAD idea. Definately YES to being able to toggle cargo bay open or closed.

Ive only ever picked up cargo by accident a few times when doing alot of botting and it doesnt really effect my poor performance anyway, more of a cosmetic feature to beable to choose whether u want to pick stuff up or not, and potentialy more useful with lots more players online.

I pick up cargo consistently during BP, and in an IBG 100kg of junk can make the difference. So can the few seconds it takes to jettsion.

I have picked up cargo accidentally before, but I do not think it validates such measures to be taken. Maybe make it an option much, much later on (VO v>2), but this is not needed right here, right now.

As for the widget pickup SFX: Revert the mine drop SFX. Done.

So make it a text command.

/cargo closed
/cargo opened

Hell, roll it all into a new cargo-handling command suite.

/cargo jettison (jettisons all non-mission cargo)
/cargo jettison X (jettisons X cu of non-mission cargo)
/cargo panic (panic jettison. All cargo, mission or not.)

good idea

"/cargo panic (panic jettison. All cargo, mission or not.)"

They call that Emergency Stores Jett, and it should get a /jett command.

I pick up cargo all the time, but I never have a problem with it. Just tap j a in rapid succession and you've dumped everything. I have those keystrokes assigned to adjacent buttons on my joystick base to make it easier.

The times that I 'accidently' pick up cargo are when I'm fighting two opponents at once. I've found that the quickest way to avoid the one behind while dealing with the one in front is to close in on the former and blast him. Especially when dealing with NPC's, this entails flying directly through the first opponent's explosion. This usually happens to me multiple times every BP mission, so I find it odd that I'm in the minority of people who would find a closed cargo bay option useful.

It's true that I could take measures to avoid picking up cargo in this manner, but that would detract from my attention and ability to fly. It's not so much a matter of game balance as just something that is obnoxious.

I like the idea of selectively disabling cargo auto-pickup, with it being enabled by default.