Ship inventory

A ship inventory holds personnel, weapons, planetary supplies, defensive devices, gold, and spies. REPORT INVENTORY lists nonzero counts and the total occupied cargo weight.

Inventory items

A ship can carry fourteen categories of items, including weapons, flux pods, planetary supplies, gold, and spies. Items lists their names, stock weights, prices, and production rates.

Carrying an item does not mean the ship can use it as equipment. Its class determines capabilities: a ship without a missile launcher can transport missiles but cannot fire them. Men, food, troops, fighters, ion cannons, and spies can be carried for colonization or trade where the applicable command permits it.

Cargo capacity

Every item has a configurable weight measured in hundredths of a ton, and each ship class has a cargo limit in whole tons. The game combines fractional weight across all item types before checking that limit. For example, stock gold weighs half a ton per unit: one unit occupies half a ton but displays as one ton in REPORT INVENTORY, while two units occupy one full ton. The same capacity rules determine how many additional units of an item will fit during a purchase, transfer, or salvage.

Item weights come from the main message/configuration file; Items lists the stock values. Changing a weight changes capacity checks but not existing item counts. Classic's intermediate cargo-weight calculation can overflow; see Classic bug: Cargo weight overflow.

Changing inventory

A ship's carried quantities change when it buys or sells goods in orbit, transfers goods to or from a planet, uses ammunition or devices, jettisons permitted cargo, or collects salvage from a destroyed ship. Each command has its own access, stock, and capacity rules. ge-next does not allow men, troops, or spies to be jettisoned.

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