Well, let me say I don't tend to end up with a ton of inventory windows everywhere because I use the "Merge Ships and Items With Station Window" option - this keeps my items window nice and tidy on the side - however...


ISSUE : corporation hangar, ship hangar, drone bays, fuel bays all get all insane as you open th em, and really inconsistent when you open one, and it opens the new window as a new tab instead of its own separate thing, then you have to split it out so you can drag stuff over, and then you want to stack certain inventory windows to make more space, but then you have to split them apart again to move stuff. Windows mini-games!!!

FIX : A unified system is appealing, but I think it can also be limiting, and not very scalable eventually. I have 45 ships, and equipment in over 10 stations (some people hundreds) - It also can be very deceptive to the new player that all this stuff is in "one place" And they might try and drag things between stations. Also, corp hangars are a conundrum in a unified system. Challenges, but not impossible to overcome.

I think idiot proofing the inventory system with icons rather than text would be a start. "BPO Filter" would be a BPO icon, etc. Too much reliance on typing would slow the system down and make it more difficult for newer and slower players to learn the curve.


Whatever you do - and don't pretend you don't have ideas CCP! - please keep the ability to merge ships and items /inventory management into the station panel - I never use anything in the station panel except as an inventory manager (or very rarely) and it would make my whole station panel a waste of space (seriously, i'd minimize it. I don't use agents, I don't need it for the fitting screen, sidebar does that, I rarely need to screw with my medical clone, I rarely switch between CQ/ships, I rarely go into the LP store, I rarely insure a ship...) I also don't want my inventory management to have to be forced into my middle screen to do things, because sometimes I have to do it in the middle of a fight and I can't have a massive screen in my face to do things.

Many times we need to be able to interact with inventories in space and around us and I don't know how a unified system could handle that clearly and without being an obstruction to itself off hand.


Main things to keep from a unified system :

• Allow merging with station panel
• Sorting Assets by Jump Distance
• Making it easy to move things around
• Allowing me to work with the scale of icons that I want (don't force me to use line entries)
• Making sure that it's all scalable to an n-th degree, if dealing with 45-100 ships in the inventory becomes cumbersome, then it will be unhappy time.
• Allow multiple windows to be open so people who want multiple windows can still have them for their usage. Don't force only one window.