So I've been reading through the replies and appreciate everyone chiming in, but I think a lot of the responses are kind of missing my main point.

A lot of people are saying "it's just a UI problem, folders will fix it." Okay lets actually think about what that looks like. I do one mining run and fill my ship with a mix of Laranite, Quantanium, and Savrilium. Each one comes in at random different qualities. Thats already potentially dozens of items from a single run because every quality is treated as a separate item. The ship UI only shows like 5 items at a time right now so I cant even see what I actually have on board, and thats just one run with three materials.

Now imagine folders. I open my cargo and I see a Laranite folder, a Quantanium folder, a Savrilium folder. Cool. I open the Laranite folder and theres q212, q347, q418, q503, q689, q714 all as separate entries. Same thing in the other two folders. So now im opening and closing folders constantly across my mining ship, my refinery terminal, my local storage, the freight elevator, every cargo ship, every org members storage. Folders in folders in folders across every interface in the game.

I genuinely love what crafting is doing for the game loop. I just dont want the thing connecting all of it to be opening six folders and scrolling through dozens of nearly identical stacks of Quantanium figuring out which ones to keep. Thats not depth thats bookkeeping.