Inventory Sorting



Today we’ll take a look at the first challenge a new capsuleer face with cubic meter (M3) management and some of the resources they have available to overcome these challenges.

Today I’ll show you which concepts, processes or items you should make yourself familiar with to make the process of sorting your phat lewts somewhat less of a hassle. In no spectacular order:

Where's my stuff?
Just like on in real life, your stuff may be located in 100 different places. When you first start out in EVE, you start in a "rookie system". In a station. Your ship and your clone is located IN THAT SPECIFIC STATION. Your purchased ammo - the same. Then you go fly a mission, and a few hours later you may think. Where's my 200 rounds of ammo?
Each station, or location is unique - so it will still be located where you left it - just like your car keys. Not in your pocket, but in the refrigerator. So fly back and get it, or locate it via the in-game menu for personal assets (Shortcut: Alt-T).

Personal Assets (ALT-T)

Personal assets gives you a bird-eye-view of your where you have your items and ships across systems. If you are wondering - "where are my 200 rounds of ammo" - this is your go-to menu - as you can also do search queries here.




Inventory (ALT-C)

Inventory Menu provides you with local access to your currently active ship and their holds (drone bay, ore hold etc), ship hangar (where you can change to other ships), Item hangar, Corp hangars and the PLEX vault. The Cargo bay shortcut can be used anywhere, even in space - where it will then give you access to all local cargo holds in the ship (ie. drone bay, fleet hangar, ore hold etc.).




Cargo Hold
You can access your ship's cargo hold with the ALT-C shortcut. Optionally: via the fitting window (ALT-F) bottom left corner. 
 











... or in-space











Folder options
You would probably know about this sorting principle from your PC. PC’s usually operate with folders and sub-folders and you can adopt this principle to some extent. For that, you’ll need to use containers, which can be purchased on the market - or built if you’re up for the challenge!

Ship Hangar
The Ship Hangar shows your active and assembled ships while in station. ALT-C to activate the cargo hold window - then left click your ship hangar, and when active - it will be highlighted. By default the active container (The Index) is on the left side, while the content on the right side. Views can be somewhat personalized.
  • When activating the ship hangar in the Index - you will see the content of the ship hangar in the right side window. Both assembled and unassembled ships.
  • When activating individual ships from the Index on the left hand side (below the ship hangar): you will see the cargo hold (not ore hold or Drone Bay) of that specific ship in the content window on the right hand side.
  • When activating individual ships from the Index on the left hand side (below the ship hangar): you can access more inventories by "expanding the ship". Click on the white arrow figure to the left of the ship name.



Item Hangar
The Item Hangar is a personal storage with unlimited space, only accessibly while docked up.  ALT-C to activate the cargo hold window - then left click your item hangar, and when active - it will be highlighted.



Filters
Properly set up filters can make it easy to find your own named ships, special modules, ammo, goods or other goodies with little to no container requirements involved. Take some time to get acquainted with this function to understand in which situations it can help you.



Containers
These are items that has different sizes and what's more important - can contain a limited amount of cubic meters. While the small ones can provide you with minor password security while ejected in space the largest ones support inventory management on a corporation scale. The biggest and most "badass" container won’t do a better job at holding your ammo stacks than many of the other ones, so consider what your needs are. It’s no secret that containers are a popular choice due to the supported  “box-in-a-box” mechanic.



Private Corp with office and named hangars
For asset management between several characters (ie. “alts”), a private corp might be ideal. With several alts in the same corp, they will instantly have access to Hangar Divisions that can be named and function much like a folder that we know from a file structure. The divisions are available to all corporation members with proper rights, so setting up your alts should be risk free and very easy.
Each corporation hangar has unlimited space, so you can drop as many station containers you want into these babies.

Setting up a corporation is fairly cheap (~1.6m ISK) and with the potential savings in tax (when set to 0%) it might be worth it to not only do that, but also get an office and hangars in a less trafficked system. Office rent is 10k ISK per month, multiplied by a factor based on how many offices have been leased out in that station. An office in any market hub will be pricy - Jita is +1 billion ISK per month. An office in a well travelled system will take you back a few million every month and if you find a station in some backwater system - things are looking a lot cheaper.


Each of these options has pros and cons and you need to investigate which options suit you best. Corps are open to war declarations (and potential ship & station loss as a result).

Nothing is ever risk free in New Eden, remember?

Enjoy!





Changelog:
  • April 2015: Content originally created for Stratics.
  • May 2016: Reposted.
  • September 2016: Edited
  • February 2017: added more sense for newbies + more pic