I often (all the time, actually) get an `Not enough storage for function' error when accessing the cargo function on planets. It doesn't seem to refer to in-game storage (i.e. my cargo hold isn't even near to full, and doesn't have a lot of items or high quantities of items). I'm not sure when it triggers, sometimes I can explore a planet for quite a while, sometimes it goes wring the second time I try to access the cargo function. As soon as it does go wrong, the cargo function doesn't work anymore until I leave the orbit of the planet.

This makes playing the game kind of a hassle. I haven't found any solution on the internet yet, but I have seen the problem mentioned a few times. I just hope that eventually someone will come along who knows what's going on, because I quite liked the game so far.

I run into this a lot too. Makes it very hard to [REDACTED]... I wonder whether there's some setting wrong in DOSBox? This never happened Back In The Day and I played a lot of Starflight.

I think, but am not 100% positive, that Starport storage also counts against whatever limit this is. So you might try clearing out Starport once you're rich - get rid of all the crap artifacts, lifeforms, and low-value non-repair minerals, using the jettison function. Lifeforms are a waste of bytes in Starflight 1, don't even bother recording their biodata, let alone capturing them.

Well, this being my first play-through, it took a little while for me to realize the uselessness of lifeforms, so my optimistic scanning and capturing might have put some strain on starflight's memory, or something. But I can't see those being stored anywhere after selling them (so I can't clear them out either). I did clear out all artifacts, but that doesn't seem to have made a difference.

It seems likely that the problem is something with playing Starflight on DOSBox.

EDIT: oh, and did you scan and capture a lot of lifeforms? Because if not, then it seems unlikely to be a significant factor.

I did scan a lot of lifeforms. They should be in Starport, below the artifacts. It definitely could be a DOSBox problem, though.

Hm, not for me, don't know what's going on there then. Guess I should just try to restore my save from before I scanned lifeforms. Most of my progress is written down in a notebook anyways :)

I'm not entirely sure about this. Other (sources) tell me that resources are refreshed whenever you leave orbit, and planetary data needs to be generated again for a planet whenever you orbit another planet or leave the system. That would mean that you'd indeed be able to break the game by repeatedly visiting the same planet without going anywhere else, but not that the game remembers everything. On the other hand, my game *does* complain about a lack of storage, which suggests something is stored over time (if we interpret the error message correctly) so I don't know what is going on.

EDIT: the other tips are extremely helpful for first time players though :)

I encountered the same problem in one of my games where I "finished" in 79 days but went on to find the rest of the artifacts that I did not try to retrieve because I was rushing through the game.

I was able to work around it for a while by launching and breaking orbit and returning and landing. However it is not much longer after that the problem was fatal.

Is this an issue with DoxBox or the memory capacity of the game?

More than likely the latter. The memory fills up and crashes the game.

I also had this problem of getting the error message "Not enough storage for function." I think that the problem may be with the STARFLT.COM file that is copied into the PLAY directory whenever you use the "Reset and Start the Game" tool from GOG. I didn't get this error message until after I had used this tool (as I recall), and I always got this error message in all my subsequent games until I uninstalled Starflight 1 and redownloaded it from GOG. When I played the game from the fresh download, everything worked fine and I beat the game.
You should notice that normally, if you get too much cargo, you receive an in-game "error" message in your cargo manifest, saying something like "Warning - Warning: Too much Cargo; some items might not appear in this list." This error message doesn't crash the game; you can still drive around the planet and pick up more stuff; and the message goes away after you sell some of your stuff at Starport. I think it was the original "error" message. On the other hand, you never receive this message once you start getting the "Not enough storage for function" error; the planet map ("Scanning New Territory") and the resources on the planet map also get all messed up; and eventually the game crashes. So I think this error is an unintentional, bad error message.
Lesson: Don't use the "Reset and Start the Game" tool. Get a fresh download, manually backup those files, and manually recopy and restart them if you need to. (at least, I think this will work)

Huh, that's interesting. I'll take this into consideration the next time I pick it up (I sort of gave up last time, the error was pretty disheartening).

Anyway, thanks!

On the memory note, yes it seems that movement around the surface does gather a lot of "scanning the area" data and that is stored while you're on the surface or in orbit. Leaving orbit and coming back (using the Maneuver command) will reset all runtime generated content. So the scans will be gone, freeing up memory. This means you probably would have wanted to do this anyway so you won't have to drive as far to find more stuff.

Now on the life forms and bio data front. If you consider the value of 1.0 units of endurium as your measure of what is worth it or not, there are many life forms that are. For starters, recording bio data on living (not stunned) life forms gains more value than the data on dead ones so before you kill it, think about that data. It doesn't take up any cargo space so its free money. Now with the body. You can't tell what its worth until you capture it. Fortunately, you can release it afterward as a dropped specimen. So if the size is 0.1 units and the value is 260 MU then that's equivalent to 2600 MU for 1.0 units of storage, which is higher than the endurium and well worth it to pick it up.

Mining is "where it's at" only in the beginning when you're not close enough to a planet rich in endurium. I've marked a planet that takes about 30 units of fuel to get to on a class 1 engine where I can do my initial mining because there's endurium at just about every new area scan. That is far better than the infrequent findings on the 3rd planet within the starting system so as soon as I can upgrade my storage to max and sell off some minerals, I will literally buy the remaining endurium I need to get there because then I will find plenty.

Later, when the ship is totally maxed out, there are home planets where the alien ships just keep spawning, and you can pick up endurium from there debris while still engaged in combat because everything slows down while you're accessing the cargo menus. Some aliens have 15.0 units each and I've seen some (not at home worlds) with as much as 25. These are additional places to stock up on endurium when you need it too if you feel lucky and want a little more action.

So thanks for the comments about going to orbit to fix the memory problem because I've tried running the program with LOADHIGH and that didn't seem to work either, but you led me to the right path, which was actually to leave orbit for the reasons mentioned above.

Looks like this error goes back quite a ways.

I can't link to it, but I found a thread on a tapatalk website, on the page "sf1-error-during-play-not-enough-storage-for-funct-t860"

It seems to be the beginning of a corrupted save file... :(