Storage isn’t currently a big deal. But as the number of items expands along with the game, and the number of reasons you can’t immediately get rid of something does too, the need for off-ship storage starts to seem pretty attractive.
I think this could be an option in your lodgings. There’s a bunch of ways you could handle pricing and demand for payment. A 1-time purchase (maybe you can upgrade to higher units of storage later.) Charging by the unit. Charging by the duration of Time The Healer since the last payment. Those two multiplied by some formula. You could demand payment when the player first enters Port. It should probably be a prompt instead of automatically deducting payment, so no one gets screwed out of being able to buy fuel or something. Fail to pay and the items stored are seized.
This probably isn’t trivial since it involves a second screen and tracking two inventories, among other things. But I think it’d be worth it down the line, especially for players who run faster ships with smaller cargo capacity. It’d be even more important if the value of trade goods were to fluctuate for some reason.
edited by Nenjin on 7/5/2014