Crate

**Crates** are items that contain bulk amount of items, allowing for easier transportation of items.

## Description

Crates of items are produced at Factory or Mass Production Factory, and in Refinery for crates of materials. Crates only contain one type of item, never a mix. No matter the content, all crates look the same in your inventory except for a small icon in the bottom right representing the item type.

The amount of items per crate is specific to the type of item: a crate of 7.62mm magazines always contains 40 of them while a crate of Gas Grenades only contain 10. Refer to Crafting for a complete list of how much each item will produce per crate

You can hover your mouse over a crate to display a tooltip with the description of what items are inside and the quantity.

All crates have the same weight (55% encumbrance), regardless of which items are inside. A crate of mortar shells has the same weight as a crate of 7.62mm ammo.

The large quantities involved allow for bulk transportation of items to the front. A simple truck with 15 slots can carry 15 crates of 7.62mm, which adds up to a total of 600 magazines.

## Creating Crates

### Factory

For factory produced items, their crates are automatically generated in the player's inventory when they pick up an order from a Factory. If the order was "personal" or "squad", the crate's description will read "**reservable**" in orange.

### Refinery

For materials produced at a Refinery, players can retrieve the materials in their queue as crates by pressing `right click` on their queue and selecting "**Retrieve as Crates**". You must have enough materials in your queue for that, a crate of Basic Materials contains 100 units, whereas Explosive Materials, Refined Materials, and Heavy Explosive Materials contain 20, and Diesel and Petrol only contain 1. Crates produced that way are "**reservable**".

### Materials Crate Packing

Crates of Materials (Basic Materials, Explosive Materials, Diesel, etc..) can also be created from stacks of the materials but only when in the menu of a Storage Depot, Seaport, or Shipping Container. You transform a stack into a crate by pressing `right click` on it and selecting "**Pack Material Crate**". The created crate will not be **reservable** however. You can also unpack crates of Materials in the same way, by selecting "**Unpack Materials Crate**" to get your materials back into a stack form. This switching only works for Material, not factory produced items.

## Submitting Crates

Crates cannot be opened directly to take their content, they must be submitted to a base's stockpile. This is done by opening the base's menu with `E`, then `right click` on the crate in your inventory and select the option "**Submit to Stockpile**" or "**Submit All to stockpile**". The latter will submit all crates in your inventory while the former will let you choose how many crates to submit.

Once submitted, the crates are destroyed and their content added to the stockpile. Players can then manually retrieve the items by assembling them with `left click`.

Crates of artillery shells (120mm, 150mm, 300mm) can also be submitted to an Ammo Room stockpile.

## Storing Crates

Using the same method, crates can also be submited to the stockpile of a Storage Depot or Seaport. This keep the crates intact and safely stored inside for future use. Only crates that are **reservable** can be submited to a Reserve Stockpile. A reservable crate stored in the public stockpile of a Storage Depot loses its reservability.

Crates can also be stored the same way in a Shipping Container or Small Shipping Container, which can hold up to 60 and 40 crates respectively. The Shipping Container can then be shipped by Flatbed, Barge, or Freighter to transport huge amounts of items.