Matrix

Your Matrix is your virtual inventory that can be accessed via your Cavelink. Items you pick up can be equipped or stored in your backpack, or alternatively, can be molecularity disassembled and translated into a data file that can be stored in your Matrix.

Uploading Items

Items that you posses can be "uploaded" into your Matrix. When you upload an item into your Matrix, it is destroyed, leaving behind a usable portion of its raw components (e.g. scrap).

Uploading items in your Matrix can be used as an alternative to selling items for their original value to a vendor by simply using the raw component conversion feature of the uploading process. Generally this results in a loss of value, since a whole item is worth more than the sum of its parts. However, this is a good way to quickly clear out needed space. Items in your Matrix can be deleted from memory to free up data space.

Matrix Item Storage

Each item has a data size, and your Matrix has a data capacity. Your Cavelink can be upgraded in various ways to have more data capacity.

E.g. Gigabytes (GB), terabytes (TB), petabytes (PB), exabytes (EB), zettabytes (ZB), and yottabytes (YB)

Unlike conventional data files that can be copied, accessing an item file uploaded into your Matrix for reading would destroy the integrity of the data, so the only practical use of a item file is to use it to re-create the physical item it represents.

Few exceptions to this rule exist, and are known as Matrix "blueprints" which are the digital instructions for assembly of very simple items of inferior quality that can be written as many times as the user has the raw resources. Simple items (like screws and nails) can be found as blueprints, which can make physical crafting much more streamlined.

Printing Items

Items can be moved from your Matrix into an open backpack or appropriate equipment slot. The process is not instantaneous however; bulkier or highly complex items take longer to transfer in and out of your Matrix, and require sufficient raw component materials to "print" the item. The printing cost far outweighs the materials yielded by uploading the item.

A printed item is removed from your Matrix inventory, freeing up the data space it was using.

Automatic access

If blueprints for consumable items, ammunition, or crafting components are in your Matrix, they can be accessed and printed automatically for use, as long as you have sufficient raw materials. Items from your physical inventory will always take priority, unless of course the physical item is "locked" from automatic use. Similarly, blueprints in the matrix can be "locked" to prevent automatic access. See Appetite and Crafting.

Matrix Decay

Some items exhibit decay, even if stored in your Matrix. In particular, consumables tend to decrease in quality in the entropy-based storage system, since it cannot maintain the fidelity of the structure of complex organic molecules as well as inert machine parts.

Upgrades to your Cavelink can decrease this rate of decay.

Matrix Transfers

Items in your Matrix can be transferred to another player, although these directly transferred items bear the sender an InCred cost equal to (#% of the data size).

Matrix Decay to avoid megalixir scenarios.