I’ve just glanced over this thread and i feel like a lot of the discord we are having with this issue can be solved by what James proposed a few months back. The economy machine is the chrysominter.
Here is the main challenge IMO, assume there is a mechanism for gathering up the contents of a beacon - say it gathers all stored items and machine contents. Beacons can be huge. 1 beacon could cover the entire world. So storage in beacons can also be huge. It could contain many 1,000s of items. Let us assume this is all bundled up and stored for a lapsed player for when they return. They return.
What is the interface that returns these 1,000s of items?
Is it a 6x6 storage GUI with N pages, that can be flipped between?
Is it a 8xN mega inventory that scrolls as required?
Is it a Matrix style “guns, lots of gun” construct storage?
How does the player manipulate this huge list of items back into their inventory and into the world?
(Alternative random idea - the beacon contents is liquidated and we convert all items into coin via the Economy Machine prices. This value is added to their balance. No mega storage or mega inventory required. If they return they can go shopping for everything.)