Feature

A backpack upgrade that allows enderchest/ender-pouch type functionality (shared inventory between a block container and a backpack-container).

Rationale

Several options for any-distance/any-dimension item access are already available, including the EnderStorage chest/pouch combo, or the RFTools remote storage tablet, etc. Similarly, auto-stocking/removing player pickups to a remote system are possible with Playerchests/Player Interfaces and piping systems. What is missing is the ability to perform the latter without inventory clutter. Doing it from an Iron Backpack, especially a worn one, would be very convenient.

Other

Implementation might be an integration with vanilla enderchests, or those ones from Ender Storage, or a custom block-container, whichever would work best.

It would probably be player-locked, and if integrating, maybe need some way of configuring the colour/channel it uses.

If combined with restocker or pickup pack upgrades, and the ability to pipe in/out of the block side, this could potentially allow for indefinite mining/building without the need to constantly re-supply. This may be either a pro or a con, and I'm not sure how it might be balanced if necessary.

It might make sense to be based on/require the Eternity upgrade, since it would mostly eliminate the need for that if the contents were available in a chest even if you lost the pack. Similarly, it might disappear at death or even need to be reapplied periodically.

Thoughts?

Hi! Thanks for the detailed write-up 😄

It's something that is definitely on my longer-term list of goals. I'd ideally like to link backpacks to other backpacks and make the backpacks placeable in-world (so that they function essentially like chests, perhaps with some unique additional functionality via upgrades). That would subvert a lot of the issues, and I could make the "linking" upgrade/ritual/etc. as tricky as I wanted to try and balance it. I am leaning towards some form of "ritual" to add some complexity/immersion but I don't want to add any blocks/bloat, so I would try and do it using some vanilla end-mechanic or something (not sure on the specifics, as I'm sure you can tell).

Adding in some linkage to the Eternity upgrade is a good idea; I hadn't considered that.

You do know that I allow right clicking to open up ender pouches directly, correct? It isn't as nice as just having the linking natively, but it's decently fast to open up the pouch from a backpack and dump some stuff in there to be transported away. Which reminds me, alternatively I could add some sort of special mod compatibility/functionality to allow the ender pouch to take in/out items if it is nested inside one of my backpacks.

Ultimately I've got a lot of ideas and very little time to actually implement them, as I'm simply a busy student :P Thanks for the ideas though! 👍

Placing backpacks would be very cool, when on the ground they could act like chests, opening via right-click and being able to pump in/out of with pipes.
If you link backpacks together you could just place one and carry the other, the placed one would be like an Ender Chest, the carried one would be like an Ender Pouch.

In the placed backpacks the upgrades could have different abilities:
Filters - pick up items within a radius
Quick Deposit - Required to pull from the backpack via hopper/pipe/machine/etc.
Advanced Quick Deposit - Auto-export items to adjacent inventories.
Eternity - Unbreakable (can still be picked up via sneak+right-click, or whichever method is used to pick them up)

I second this. This is a feature I've been wanting for a long time. Sure, there's Ender Pouches from Ender Storage (and it would be great to be able to link an Ender Upgrade to an EnderChest from that mod. Sometimes I just like to keep on mining my 3x3 tunnels and not have to stop to put the items in.

Also, I'm not sure if the filters use NBT/Metadata (i.e., for broken tools to be sent back to the base for repair, and then re-appear in the backpack), but having Ender filters for that would be usefull, too.

Ender functionality