The cargo bay is the core storage mechanism for all items in the game. Almost all interactions with items in the game are interacting with items that are in a cargo bay. Interactions with items can often replace the item with a Reservation.
Cargo Bays are never required for a ship or station to function.
The capacity of a cargo bay is only limited by its Volume. There is no limit to the total amount of mass that can exist within a cargo bay at this time. The volume capacity is entirely dictated by the size of the facility itself. Larger cargo bays hold more items.
The total capacity of cargo is reduced by the volume of Installed Equipment. For more information, see Shared Facility Volume Capabilities.
At this time, many jobs will attempt to pull items from or push items to an arbitrary cargo bay that is within the same Interactable Base or is in a Connected Cargo Bay. To help control which items are put in what cargo bays, you can enable or disable exports on each cargo bay.
Future Plans: Enhancing the ability to control what jobs are utilizing which cargo bays is on the road map and will provide much needed management capabilities of cargo within the game. At this time, players can only enable or disable imports and exports entirely.