Ship Interiors

[Dmetal2001]

What I mean by ship interiors is being able to go to different areas of a ship such as on larger class ships having an engineering deck, crew quarters, etc.

[battou]

+1 Im also would like to be able to visit ship sections, captains quarters at least, maybe engineering deck, some corridors. To make them not a flying room, but a ship.

[CBJ]

There are several things to consider before leaping into creating huge interiors.

• This is fundamentally a space game, and most people want to spend most of their time flying spaceships. Interiors are good for building immersion and can introduce some interesting gameplay opportunities, but if they get out of hand then they have the potential to dominate the workload. Not creating any interiors at all isn't really an option these days, as many people expect them, but spending too much time on them at the expense of the spaceships would be... unwise.
• If you are going to create additional interior areas then there has to be a purpose to them. Cargo bays and engine rooms are all very well, but what are you actually going to do there, other than look at the pretty graphics and feel the immersion? Remembering the point above, there is a careful balance to be struck between giving people a gameplay reason to go there if they want to do that kind of thing, and not forcing them to go there if they don't. The initial release of XR didn't quite get that balance right, but we improved on it in later updates. With X4 we've tried to improve that further, and that means not adding long corridors or areas with not much happening, even if that would be more immersive.
• Expanding on that point, making interior areas without some kind of "fast travel" between them also risks making them unusable. If you have a capital ship that's hundreds of metres long, with a bridge at one end and a docking bay at the other, making people run from one place to the other might be good for immersion, but it makes for some really painful gameplay. And before anyone mentions the dreaded "make it an option", think about how much work would have to go into creating that option, knowing full well that the vast majority of people would switch it off because it was simply too boring!

[Killjaeden]

I rather have 50 more ships than giving existing ships more giant empty rooms without purpose.

[skyler.g]

I rather have 50 more ships than giving existing ships more giant empty rooms without purpose.

If there really is a zero-sum contest, I'm with you. I'd prefer both... even if the interiors are fairly generic... but more ships and equipment would be a much higher priority in my book.

[MaGicBush]

Im torn. This sounds like an awesome thing, and I was wondering if bigger ships had them. Sadly I guess not, but I could see them being pointless really. Unless there is stuff to do in each interior there is no reason to waste dev time on it imho. If they could come up with some reason to use such rooms(maybe 1 or 2 extra on each capital that you could visit like an engine room you could go in and mod for better space flight I dunno) then sure.

[firemane]

I rather have 50 more ships than giving existing ships more giant empty rooms without purpose.

What? You want 50 more ships?

Jokes aside, I can think of at least two other space games where I wish the ships had actually less rooms. I shall not name them. Suffice it to say that it took me about 20 minutes to get from a planetside room to an actual ship in one of them last week.

[bl3ek]

I rather have 50 more ships than giving existing ships more giant empty rooms without purpose.

I agree with that.

I really love the cockpits because of the immersion, but more rooms wouldn't add any benefits.

The courier is pretty cool though as it has a 'corridor' behind the cockpit with extra detail, that I do also like.

But, more ships will always win!

[Karvat]

I rather have 50 more ships than giving existing ships more giant empty rooms without purpose.

Me too, ships in this game aren't enough for now
Clusters too

[RWolf]

The problem is more that developers haven't designed anything to do in the rooms, but the same goes for stations as well. Personally I would have preferred seeing various crafting stations or rooms on a ship, have the cargo bay require user organization for maximum space (creating a resource management challenge), or just scrap all the 1st person stuff entirely. The bigger issue is that egosoft might not be able to pull the interior stuff off, which in that case its better to just focus on the external instead (ships, stations and space in general). Stations (exterior) are a noticeably big step backwards from XR. Everything now is just half modeled and mirrored in the most boring way possible.

[battou]

Regarding what devs stated. About fast travel system between rooms - you already have one, transportation room on station and that panel on the ship. If you afraid to overload your self with work on them - add an ability to mod them in, community will do the rest.

[JamesTheClarke]

I rather have 50 more ships than giving existing ships more giant empty rooms without purpose.

Fully agreed. Already the current new ship interiors are the main argument for why X4 has launched with fewer ships and factions than its predecessors. Expanding the interiors further could even more hamper not only official ship and faction development but also make modder's lives a lot more difficult to create their own ships.


PS: Absolutely bloody love your mod Xtended. My favourite X universe content ever made!

[ZombiePotatoSalad]

I already brought this up, and my final opinion was pretty much the same: although interiors are nice, I'd rather see more new ships than more interiors for the ones we have.