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Interior development
oooooon
Member Posts: 73 Arc User
I have probably missed a few interview out there. But I am curious to know what Cryptics plan is for the ship interiors?
I realise they have a limited development schedule, but still they must have drawed up some plans. Or perhaps something has been mentioned in the many dev interviews etc.
So far I've read that there are plans to make the Voyager and TNG bundle (thank god finally)
But what about expanding the functionality of the interiors? Any thoughts or rumors?
I realise they have a limited development schedule, but still they must have drawed up some plans. Or perhaps something has been mentioned in the many dev interviews etc.
So far I've read that there are plans to make the Voyager and TNG bundle (thank god finally)
But what about expanding the functionality of the interiors? Any thoughts or rumors?
Post edited by oooooon on
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I'd give a link but that appears to offend people here.
Same love needs to go to the KDF as well. I am tired of going to my Gorn ship and stepping on to a Klingon bridge. We may be allies but the Klingons did not build my ship!
They're too busy working on Neverwinter and lockboxes.
Dec '07 Account
I EARNED 1000 days...I didn't BUY it! New LTS=Death to Vet.System: 10/10/12 Never Forget
Something should be done for those who cared enough to have a 1000+ day sub.
It's funny that I hear so many people praising CoH's base editor NOW. Back when I was playing that game a few years ago, I remember everyone saying that it was the crappiest excuse for a editor with no actual choices so almost all bases ended up looking pretty much the same.
Also, didn't supergroup bases come into play after Cryptic sold CoH to NCSoft?
Raptr profile
We heard very little praise back then for the editor, and got almost nothing but complaints. Our statistics showed that only about 10% of people used the base for anything other than a quick door to teleport around the rest of the world.
All of that is one reason we've been hesitant in doing it over again. We tried a new method with Hideouts in Champions, which seemed to be met with moderate success, but took a lot of work to build.
I've heard nothing about redoing ship interiors. My personal feeling is that there should be little customization on layout. If you have an Intrepid, you get an Intrepid class layout. If you have a Defiant, you get a Defiant class layout. But I think players should have control over a few different overall styles, textures, colors, and lighting. So all Galaxy Class ships would have the same layout, but you could choose from TNG style (beige, brightly lit) or 2409 style, or random style A, B or C. etc.
However, that is just my personal feelings on the matter, no work is being done on Interiors at the moment, and havent heard of it being added to the schedule at all. Plus, all of that would be a lot of work.
I realise it would take some effort, but if you did it right I think there would be a lot of people, myself included that would be very grateful for it. I know I'd kill for a Galaxy interior which has the same attention to detail as the TOS set and I'd GLADLY pay for it, even though it's something that should be there by right... if it helps the game and means we get quality interiors than it's a price I'm prepared to pay.
Looking for a dedicated Star Trek community? Visit www.ufplanets.com for details.
Now THIS sounds awesome! You keep that spirit up!
1) Having the proper interiors for each ship (or shiptype) would greatly enhance the general immersion of the game and would tremendously increase the "caretaking"-factor each player develops for "his/her" ship (This would also increase the potential of selling ship/ship interior-costimuzation in the C-store a lot...)
2) Having "standardized" interiors, i.e. a limited set of possible interior layouts, opens up the possibility of finally designing missions INSIDE of your ship.
3) Adding those interior sets as assets to the Foundry might take care of 2)... We'll see what happens with the Defiant and TOS sets once the Foundry's back up ;P
STOWiki admin.
Personally, I love tinkering with my bases. Tweaking them to really represent my characters is one of the most fun parts of the game to me.
And since the new Overlords don't like anything that takes a lot of work instead of quick afternoon I imagine it will never happen.
Agree 100% with this part. That would actually make things simpler on the Devs side. Make basic templates complete with standard rooms in standard places for each hull and leave the interior decorating to us.
And as I said above anything that requires a lot of work will probably never happen.
dstahl mentioned customizable ship interiors will be based on technology that is being currently worked on in Neverwinter according to June's Ask Cryptic.
So I imagine that we will see this next year at the earliest assuming the tech is transferrable.
Be nice if we could have such a resource with the Foundry.
Here are some spoiler pictures of my Klacht D'Kel Bracht Mission of custom interiors that I been working on for a while:
Romulan Bridge (Looking Aft)
Romulan Bridge (Looking Fore)
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/D7_class
D7 Engine Room (from TAS: More Tribbles, More Troubles)
D7 Conference Froom (from TAS: Time Trap)
There is much much more with with my D7 Custom Interior that was taken from Star Trek 6.
Agreed! I actually think there's too much customization and I like your take but with two caveats; 1. We should also be able to choose from several styles for center seat and bridge seating & 2. If we can't choose the actual layout I'd appreciate it if the layouts were designed a bit more sensibly. Too many of them either enshrine the Capt. like an Emperor in a huge empty area in the middle or else look like someplace a ladies sewing circle might meet. The bridge needs to be a functional yet comfortable place where everyone goes to work everyday. The most comfortable and functional bridge available, now, is the TOS Enterprise bridge but the bridge from the Enterprise series was also a good layout as well as the new JJ Abrams bridge, IMO. Never cared much for the NextGen bridge, always looked, to me, too much like a bank lobby. I always thought that arch in back of Picard should be decorated with little pens on chains and Worf, smiling, asking "Would you like to open a new account, today?" - ROFL. As for the Voyager bridge... it always looked like something designed by someone's Political Action Committee on a bad day. Also most of the bridges need bigger central view screens.
It would also be nice if each basic ship style came with it's own deck layouts (crew, engineering, medical) etc. that were unique to that design. Again you could customize a bit, within limits, but the basic layout should be static for that particular class of ship.
I actually agree with that idea on interior layouts, it makes sense and would be far better than generic small, medium, or large. Also if you can somehow convince the guys to start work on interiors I would recommend giving the Sovereign style bridges a makeover, of all the bridges in the game they're the most offensively inaccurate, in my opinion at least.
Worf as a Bank Teller.
But yeah, when we were getting interiors for the first time, I was hoping they were accurate to the ships, but instead it was "one size fits all".
I would love to see us having interiors true to each ship, but realize the ammount of work hours needed would be rather lengthy for each ship type (don't need to be every single ship). Then what they told us that there would need to be a reason to justfy in focusing on ship interiors. Right now, there isn't much to do or reason to keep you on your ship more than a few minutes.
They did a great job with the TOS interior and the Defiant / Belfast Interior. I could see them doing the same for other ships as well. They don't need to map the entire ship, but like the show focus to certain decks.
Not to mention(what a ridiculous saying) the fact that the more customizable interiors are, the less likely they will ever be used in any kind of mission or content.
Thank you for giving us an update. Its dissapointing to hear though that no work is being done at the moment. I would have thought with the amount of people asking for it that it would be profitable to build the interiors despite it being time consuming.
I agree. Some bases were amazing and you can tell who actually spent lots of time on it and had talent compared to those that just threw stuff everywhere.
Me playing UT2k4 (red guy) - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wz0DnP7wXnU
From what I've read about MMO's, there appears to be a small minority of players who want the full immersive in-game role-playing experience and would thus put the effort into outfitting their "homes", whilst the remaining majority simply sees it as a place to dump extra loot before moving on to the next mission/quest. And of course tacofangs/Tumerboy's comment about the 90% of CoV players simply using their "base" as quick doorways to mission/quest maps.
Thus, it seems that until it could be justified that ship interiors could be used in gameplay content that interests the majority of players, it's probably not something Cryptic would invest in any more than what they have now.
However...
If a variety of appropriate gameplay content could be introduced into ship interiors, then allowing players to customize said environment would make more sense.
Current uses of ship interiors in STO
Potential uses of ship interiors in STO
Other "nice to have" features simply to help with overall immersion
Ship interior styling, room and deck layouts
I'm agreement with tacofangs/Tumerboy on the following:
As long as said layouts are not simply non-canon smushing the rooms up into the fewest possible decks.
For instance, I'm a massive Intrepid-class fan, so I expect the Officer's Mess on Deck 2, Captain's Quarters on Deck 3, Transporter and Security complex (brig + armory) on Deck 4, Sickbay, morgue and Science lab on Deck 5 etc. A not-quite-canon-but-good-enough deck plan reference is Cygnus-X1.net's Intrepid-class blueprints page.
(FYI: High-res spreads of Intrepid-class Decks 1 / 2 / 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8a / 8b, 9a, 9b / 10, 11, 12 / 13 and 14 / 15)
Now, having Cryptic create a complete Intrepid-class interior down to every crewman's quarters is downright ridiculous, so what I'm saying is that Cryptic should take these plans, put the important rooms on the right decks, then seal off all the other doors and trim parts of the corridors to save map data space.
This I like very much as well - being able to choose the styling.
Again using my baby, the Intrepid-class, as an example:
Rooms I feel should be included and potential uses
In terms of ship interiors:
I would like the scale revisited once you have done interior replicas for:
Defiant (Done!)
Intrepid (In talks?)
Galaxy (In discussion for longterm, I think?)
Sovereign
My feeling is, at that point, you'll have the assets and the parts to build a better stock interior. Overall, I think it would make the most sense being in the Facility 4028/Odyssey style but in a scale a bit closer to the replica sets.
Klingon interiors look fine to me.
I'd like it if we could have:
- Trophy displays in personal quarters
- Choice of warp cores
- Choice of LCARS
- Color scheme and lighting options
- Additional decks beyond Engineering/Crew/Bridge where we can select rooms to drop in. I can see where this could be tied to gameplay in several ways if we have, say, 3 slots per additional deck for custom rooms and have to choose what features we want in them.
My preference for interiors would also be that, due to limited scale and realism, we be defaulted to /walking in them except when sprinting.
Now... I think a Galaxy interior will be your peak sales pack and is probably worth doing as a bigger set. One reason for this is the popularity of TNG. Another is that virtually all of it would function recolored as a Constitution Refit interior since they used the TNG sets for that. (And, in turn, the same mods would largely apply to the Intrepid for an Excelsior interior.)
The big thing I'd like for a Galaxy interior to have is, in addition to crew and engineering decks, a "Civilian" deck with:
A barbershop, like Mott's (with tailor functionality) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Barbershop_2367.jpg
A classroom http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Galaxy_class_school.jpg (Perhaps with extra access to the existing lore datachips, such as a unit that dispenses a random one) (With Humuhumunukunukuapua'a as the contact for any dialogues in there) http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Humuhumunukunukuapua%27a
A theater http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/File:Galaxy_class_theater,_2367.jpg (with a musical performance running constantly)
Perhaps a quarters unit setup with a poker game in progress.
The inclusion of these four things helps sell the interior as a place designed for civilians. I'd imagine extra DOff contacts around this deck.
Zstore purchase or lockbox gamble? :P
Bahahahahah!
What about shuttle and small craft interiors? One of the jarring things I've noted is no matter which small craft you choose, the cockpit will always be the 2409 runabout style with massive arching windows.
This is particularly apparent with the "Diplomatic Orders" mission, where when you pick up Ambassador Sokketh, you're using a Type-8 shuttle - this results in a funny TARDIS-like situation when you converse with Sokketh later on inside the shuttle.
But how can we justify the use of authentic shuttle interiors? The Foundry comes to mind, but is there any gameplay elements that could make use of such interiors too?
A concept I had was actually putting a Bank/Mail/Exchange on your ship, using the Subspace Transceiver compartment (or Astrometrics). It makes sense, I mean it can be done. The transceiver can be used to transmit the "replication patters" for items, all you have to do is scan and send. You could also use the cargo bay as your bank.
I also had the idea recently to launch one of your small vessels (shuttles/fighters) as combat pets, piloted by your BOffs, on demand. I thought of this for full ships, but they wouldn't be on demand. You'd unlock the "launch shuttle" power at Commander, and would have this ability out-of-combat (you'd have to designate the 2/3 BOffs in the shuttle, and possibly equip it), and then order it like a fighter. You'd unlock the "Starship companion" option at RA, and you could do this if you had enough BOffs to staff it. Ship companions would work the same way as shuttles, but bigger. For instance, my Eng is flying the Ody, but he has a Defiant that he doesn't use (he's more specced for an Ody). My BOffs that I don't use would staff the Defiant's bridge and fly it to assist me. If you have enough BOffs... you could have both (BOff ship and Shuttle) out (in a team). You're an Admiral, why would you go these missions alone? Defeat of these ships would require retrieval, as the ship would be disabled.
Well.... I only have one character... but account would be best.
I really want sumghai's plan. That would be instant amazingness.