Not sure if this has been discussed before, but figured I'd throw it out anyways. Idea I had was to add the ability to "activate" some item of your cargo. Works especially well now that variable-size cargo has been implemented.

Things like re-arm and repair modules, ECM, cloak, player-owned station/factory/mine, and other items which wouldn't logically take up a 'weapon' slot could all be cargo items.

Benefits:
Large cargo capacity ships become useful as support craft
Lower impact to add special or mission-specific modules

How would you choose which cargo item to activate? Would it be in a different menu? or would you have a next/prev selector thingy that highlights a cargo item? And how would the game know the difference between activating a cargo item and activating the jumpout sequence?

Your idea has been in the back of my head for years, but these are just some of the problems that need to be resolved first.

I think new selector keys would be ok. Like [ and ] select prev and next cargo item. The item selected could be highlighted in the hud cargo display box.

This would also be nice for selective cargo jettisoning. Jettison only that which is selected.

A seperate activate key would need to be assigned I think. 'Enter' already has enough jobs.

Another method that comes to mind is the Unreal Tournement style 'voice command' menu. You hit the key and a pop-up comes in that only stays while the key is held down, you can quickly click on a cargo unit to select from here. Maybe selecting it would actually toggle it on or off thus eliminating the need for an activate key. Right click could pop up options like on/off/jettison.

This style is nice because you can use your mouse for a quick selection but if something requires you to need control of your ship again you need only let go of the button.

I like the selector keys idea that Hoax has. My initial thought was to bind a key that would pop up a menu, and you could scroll through the menu to select the cargo item, but selectors let you have the item pre-selected so you can activate it in a hurry.

Selective cargo jettisoning would be nice as well, maybe with a sequence like 'J-J-J' to dump everything. (Eject, eject, eject!)

The mouse buttons are already taken for weapons. Perhaps { and } could be used ([ and ] are for rotating targets). Also, j could jettison all cargo (like now) and J could jettison the selected cargo. Although, this makes pirates _have_ to kill their prey to make sure they get all the cargo. Also, perhaps Right Control could activate the cargo.

I think it would be nice if, when you selected Cargo in space, it told you what type and how much.

What about shift-3 through shift-0, in other words

#$%^&*()
could activate the cargo in the first eight slots. In the station, they'd be loaded in that order. Even a technomage type with eight activatable things in his inventory would be able to access it all fairly easily.

I like the ideas of using the shift-# to add "funcion" slots to the cargo hole. and with the new cargo system you can hold more items. and limit of 3 or 4 usable items doesn't seem unreasonable.