My Art Lead made the call on Earth, and it's reversion to 3D.
Similarly, he thought that Earth Space felt empty, so he had me add more drydocks around the other side of ESD.
The Start Spawn is positioned where it is to create a more interesting frame when you first warp in. I'll mess with it.
The extra warp in points do not collide with any drydocks.
considering the size of Starfleet, a large number of box docks is not out of line. and when you consider that a box dock is just a frame with lights and docking hardware to act as a work platform for working on the exterior of a ship, you could easily get a large number of them when accommodating different sizes of ships.
also something to consider, utopia planitia is involved in building ships and major overhauls. and would have much more involved platforms. i thought mckinnly when i saw it in the series was out of place for earth orbit because of utopia planitia. big e needed some serious repairs after her encounter with the borg. box docks would probably not be very useful most of the time.
and having them clustered near ESD makes sense too, work on ships within the docks would more easily be staged out of ESD then from earth.
Honestly, they should let people who have maxed out the Diplomacy/Marauder tree get access to eachothers respective homeworlds, as a diplomatic envoy. :P
Honestly, they should let people who have maxed out the Diplomacy/Marauder tree get access to eachothers respective homeworlds, as a diplomatic envoy. :P
agreed, I've wanted this for a long time now. other than the exploration and the shortcut through the gate, its not much of a perk. additionally, maybe we could get access to some of the duty officer assignments for fed/kdf when in that region of space.
Honestly, they should let people who have maxed out the Diplomacy/Marauder tree get access to eachothers respective homeworlds, as a diplomatic envoy. :P
That would be nice. It might inspire more people to try out KDF if they see more of them around.
Honestly, they should let people who have maxed out the Diplomacy/Marauder tree get access to eachothers respective homeworlds, as a diplomatic envoy. :P
Club 47 is a lot further away from Admiral Quinn's office now. So no I don't want to see players having to go to the club to get their promotions again.
My Art Lead made the call on Earth, and it's reversion to 3D.
I don't disagree with this. I did enjoy the grandeur upon visiting the previously-altered ESD space map, but on the other hand it did feel less interesting and a little immersion-breaking without Earth being a reachable "physical" object in the map. It's unfortunate that the game engine forces this sort of trade off.
Personally, after having played games like Starfleet Command and various other Trek games with unrealistically-sized planets, this has never bothered me so long as planets *seem* big. Though sometimes it doesn't always work out (Legacy had some *very* tiny planets), I have *usually* felt STO's planets are sized well enough to keep me from breaking my visual immersion and helping maintain my suspension of disbelief.
Even with some prior use of a realistically large planet as a background object in STO, it was, as far as I recall, balanced by having other nearby planetary objects to keep us from realizing we could never reach the backdrop planet as part of a mission. This isn't the same for ESD space, which is a social space map basically, "fully explorable" up to a point. Which is why I feel it's important we keep the Earth as an object we can "play around" with, so to speak.
That aside, and I've yet to check Tribble today to comment on other ESD space map changes, but since there aren't a lot of other things populating the ESD space map, is there no room to upscale the Earth model a bit to take up some more of the playable space? This may help make it seem bigger without removing it as an object in the playable game world that we can fly around, I'd think.
Club 47 is a lot further away from Admiral Quinn's office now. So no I don't want to see players having to go to the club to get their promotions again.
I was referring to what happened some time last year. For a little while we had KDF players who used an exploit that allowed them access to ESD. Once they beamed into the station the NPCs started attacking them. Often times they would go to Admiral Quinn's office and get him to attack them, and "kite" the Admiral over to the back inside Club 47, hence my response about not wanting players to have to go to Club 47 to talk to Admiral Quinn for their promotion missions to get their free ship tokens and whatnot.
This happened on a regular basis. NPCs out of place all over the station, security officers wandering around with weapons in their hands, etc.
In retaliation federation players use the same type of exploit to beam into first city on Qo'nos and attacked Worf, getting him to move out of place.
I think I saw KDF players on ESD attacking NPCs once or twice but can't remember exactly, and at least once On Qo'nos I saw feds trying to take out the NPCs to get to Worf.
Cryptic had posted a message on the forums not to post how to do it and to report any players we see doing it and that they will be dealt with. Then soon after they fixed the exploit allowing KDF and fed players to visit their enemy's homeworld.
So again, no. I don't want KDF to "visit" ESD or feds to "visit" Qo'nos. I am open to it if Cryptic ever decides to officially end the KDF/fed war and make them allies in the game, which would most likely not happen unless they decide to move the game past the year 2409.
With thousands of starships and all the repairs and refitting constantly going on in STO compared to the 97 total ships in Starfleet during Wolf and the Borg attack, seems we need more drydocks I guess.:D
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
My Art Lead made the call on Earth, and it's reversion to 3D.
Similarly, he thought that Earth Space felt empty, so he had me add more drydocks around the other side of ESD.
The Start Spawn is positioned where it is to create a more interesting frame when you first warp in. I'll mess with it.
The extra warp in points do not collide with any drydocks.
As one of the people that suggested the Quadra Sigma style gigantic planet backdrop, I'm pretty sorry to see it go, though from an aesthetic perspective I probably won't cry to much. I'm of two minds.
The 2D backdrop in my feeling was WAYYY too dark. The dark side wasn't illuminated by city lights and the day side was.
In many ways it was hard to see at a glance that it was Earth.
Quadra Sigma by contrast is enormous and incredibly well lit. It also benefits from being below I think. Something about the scale or maybe the idea that it is down. If you think about it every last one of us is used to a planet being below us.
All I can ask is that the resolution issues get some attention and to make the planet as large as possible. And fix the lights.
I would still like to have a massive beautiful Earth with towering cloud banks and such visible below us. Maybe even visible intercontinental flights, or regular shuttles to and fro.
But I know you have a time table and I appreciate the immense amount of work that you guys have put in trying to get this right. I know that there are other environments that need to be worked on and possibly others that will receive their own updates in the future, so after Club 47 is done it may be a while before you get back to Earth. But thanks. Whatever makes it to Holodeck is gonna be awesome. Thank you for listening to us. It means a lot.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
On the subject of the drydocks, I think they should be maybe moved back a few kilometers from Spacedock. Not as far as on Holodeck, but Spacedock itself should be the absolute dominant orbiting structure. So when you warp in seeing smaller docks doesn't really work for me.
But there is some precedent for it being encircled by smaller docks. Like that shot of Spacedock and the Enterprise in the December 2010 Ships of the Line Calendar by Robert Wilde (which there is no pic of online ) http://img.trekmovie.com/images/merchandise/wilde_sotl_2010.jpg
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
If you're gonna do throwback swing music at least do some original Earth Swing music. This is a proper Starfleet facility not a hole in the wall in a hive of evil on the most important backwater planet on the outskirts of a galaxy far far away.
It really was. Must all music in the future be electronic or techno
I do think the club could use a larger selection of songs than what we have now. Perhaps, a greater variety of music can be added with the revamp of Club 47.
Bloom has already been adjusted. (I fixed it before, but it didn't stick for whatever reason)
The lights were not off in Europe, the planet was just not rotated enough to SEE Europe.
I have no way of turning lights off on the lit side of a planet. A planet either has city lights, or it doesn't.
I think having drydocks in view with ESD helps to sell the enormous scale of ESD.
to be better than the much more realistic background sprite of Earth we used to have until the last Tribble patch.
So if it really HAS to be a 3D model, tacofangs has to do some magic and squeeze some time out of his Art Lead (is it still Jeremy Mattson?) in order to be able to replace Earth's texture. I am aware of STO's engine-related limit on maximum texture size, but there has to be a better/more realistic looking alternative than that ugly thing we had to look at for the past 4+ years :-|
Bloom has already been adjusted. (I fixed it before, but it didn't stick for whatever reason)
The lights were not off in Europe, the planet was just not rotated enough to SEE Europe.
I have no way of turning lights off on the lit side of a planet. A planet either has city lights, or it doesn't.
Really?
I suppose that makes a small degree of sense. After all when we have engine offline status our nacelles don't go dark. At least I don't think they do.
I would've thought on the 3D model it was at least by continent. And the static one I thought was just a picture.
Oh well much better to have the lights on on the dark side.
I think having drydocks in view with ESD helps to sell the enormous scale of ESD.
I thought parking our ships near it was more than sufficient.
I can understand the thinking, it just doesn't bear much for me since I know how huge the thing is. And I still have canon images of Spacedock alone in orbit running through my head.
As long as you don't go back to the enormous super spacedock complex that was here before you had Q zap the canon Spacedock into existence I think it'll be just fine.
"Rise like Lions after slumber, In unvanquishable number, Shake your chains to earth like dew, Which in sleep had fallen on you-Ye are many they are few"
Bloom has already been adjusted. (I fixed it before, but it didn't stick for whatever reason)
The lights were not off in Europe, the planet was just not rotated enough to SEE Europe.
I have no way of turning lights off on the lit side of a planet. A planet either has city lights, or it doesn't.
I think having drydocks in view with ESD helps to sell the enormous scale of ESD.
Please consider giving Earth a better texture. This just looks... unsatisfying:
It is blocky and unrealistic. The colors look unnatural...
Compare:
Also: Why are there so many more lights on Earth? I would assume Roddenberry's humanity to give nature MORE and not less space than it does today.
I like the dry docks as well but I think they may be too close to the warp in point for ships. And I don't know about the Earth in the space view now, the one attached to the sky map before looked great, but this one when there is any bloom or glare off the oceans just looks terrible, the reflecting surface does not follow the continental surfaces but rather has a blocky artificial look. With atmospheric diffusion I don't think the Earth would have glare off its' surface like that anyway, small areas of reflection perhaps but none of this blinding planet on fire glare nonsense, at least I have never seen space based photographs that look anything like that.
Also: Why are there so many more lights on Earth? I would assume Roddenberry's humanity to give nature MORE and not less space than it does today.
While I imagine humanity has moved its manufacturing off world, The Moon and Mars getting the Lions share, they aren't going to completely abandon their homeworld and Earth is essentially the Capital of the Federation. Where there are people there are the trappings of civilization.
If something is not broken, don't fix it, if it is broken, don't leave it broken.
I was referring to what happened some time last year. For a little while we had KDF players who used an exploit that allowed them access to ESD. Once they beamed into the station the NPCs started attacking them. Often times they would go to Admiral Quinn's office and get him to attack them, and "kite" the Admiral over to the back inside Club 47, hence my response about not wanting players to have to go to Club 47 to talk to Admiral Quinn for their promotion missions to get their free ship tokens and whatnot.
This happened on a regular basis. NPCs out of place all over the station, security officers wandering around with weapons in their hands, etc.
In retaliation federation players use the same type of exploit to beam into first city on Qo'nos and attacked Worf, getting him to move out of place.
I think I saw KDF players on ESD attacking NPCs once or twice but can't remember exactly, and at least once On Qo'nos I saw feds trying to take out the NPCs to get to Worf.
Cryptic had posted a message on the forums not to post how to do it and to report any players we see doing it and that they will be dealt with. Then soon after they fixed the exploit allowing KDF and fed players to visit their enemy's homeworld.
So again, no. I don't want KDF to "visit" ESD or feds to "visit" Qo'nos. I am open to it if Cryptic ever decides to officially end the KDF/fed war and make them allies in the game, which would most likely not happen unless they decide to move the game past the year 2409.
that's hilarious. im sorry i missed out on that. i can imagine sitting there watching the fun while eating dinner. or helping the npc's repel borders.
obviously, it would need some programming for the game to recognize a foreign faction/aligned character as non-hostile, but it would make the maxed diplomacy more useful to get something other than right of passage and another transwarp destination out of it.
http://puu.sh/83RW3.jpg
As you can see in the image the new ship readout is very, very, blurry. And also, its been misspelled Hipocrates. I'm assuming this is the same old ship from Task Force Hippocrates, so kudos for continuity.
Is there a reason that the civilian, Caitian bartender was renamed from Niwan to Lt. Velde?
Thumbs-up for the additional shipyard a ways out from ESD. It's sitting right where I'd expect the S.F. Yards facility to be. While I count myself amongst those who will park my starship in a drydock from time to time, I wonder if the numerous Drydock sets around ESD and one with this new station are sufficient? Having two sets with the second station might be overkill.
(/\) Exploring Star Trek Online Since July 2008 (/\)
Is there a reason that the civilian, Caitian bartender was renamed from Niwan to Lt. Velde?
Thumbs-up for the additional shipyard a ways out from ESD. It's sitting right where I'd expect the S.F. Yards facility to be. While I count myself amongst those who will park my starship in a drydock from time to time, I wonder if the numerous Drydock sets around ESD and one with this new station are sufficient? Having two sets with the second station might be overkill.
I am very concerned that ESD will become cluttered, since the argument is to address the emptiness of the map may I suggest the following;
Have a larger dock construction over San Fransisco to the far right of ESD for the San Fransisico Fleet Yards, have a small dock collection in various size TMP docks on the far left of ESD with a SMALL orbital outpost. The TMP docks would hold the NX Enterprise, Ent-A, Ent-B, the stolen B'rel from ST3, a TOS Constitution, (constellation when available) and other classic ships, this would act as the Starfleet Museum. Add these while having a small selection of docks outside the ESD window only.
This would hold the dual purpose of de-cluttering around ESD but having more assets in the map as well as having canon consistency. These assets already exist, it would merely be a matter of placing them appropriately.
I agree with some of the posters here. It's space, it shouldn't be cluttered.
One suggestion could be to put some of these facilities in other areas around Earth Orbit. On the show when we saw McKinley Station it did not seem to be within visual range of ESD. Since we can fly around Earth Again (which is an iffy decision IMO, I liked the backdrop version), you might as well space out the facilities.
Absolutely beautiful as far as layout and content, and it's nice to have something new to explore, but...we shouldn't HAVE to explore "home" to find everything.
Yeah, I know, I know, "there's a map." But, when I "re-decorate" my flat, I don't have to look at a directory to relocate the loo.
Once again, leave well enough alone! Of all the things that need/needed overhauling, ESD was NOT one of them. Wasn't the "next thing on the agenda" supposed to be matching starship bridges with corridors and such? I mean, we now have the default bridge ("Origin," right?) that LOOKS and FEELS like a bridge - more compact, more 'intimate' - but the corridors are still very angular and large enough to drive a Mac truck through everywhere except for the Fed tutorial ship...
Again, the new ESD is beautiful, I admit. But, if your "house" is in order, why remodel? And, just out of curiosity, are you "rebuilding" a home for the Klingons, or are they stuck with the same drapes and carpets as before?
Fleet Commander
Caprica's Revenge (...actually active since November 2010, which may one day be important to archaeologists, but not to anyone else...)
One thing I've noticed is that in the area around Ops/Quinn's office, one can hear the sounds of impulse engines (or at least the same sound effect that is used when under impulse power). It can be heard throughout ops, and about 10 meters outside of the ops walls.
Absolutely beautiful as far as layout and content, and it's nice to have something new to explore, but...we shouldn't HAVE to explore "home" to find everything.
Yeah, I know, I know, "there's a map." But, when I "re-decorate" my flat, I don't have to look at a directory to relocate the loo.
Once again, leave well enough alone! Of all the things that need/needed overhauling, ESD was NOT one of them. Wasn't the "next thing on the agenda" supposed to be matching starship bridges with corridors and such? I mean, we now have the default bridge ("Origin," right?) that LOOKS and FEELS like a bridge - more compact, more 'intimate' - but the corridors are still very angular and large enough to drive a Mac truck through everywhere except for the Fed tutorial ship...
Again, the new ESD is beautiful, I admit. But, if your "house" is in order, why remodel? And, just out of curiosity, are you "rebuilding" a home for the Klingons, or are they stuck with the same drapes and carpets as before?
I agree that there are other things needing looked at, but I completely support them putting the time and effort into this project. It's something they've wanted to do for a while but haven't had the time allocated to them for such a project. The current ESD (even after the improvements made a few years ago) is dark and depressing, it doesn't feel very Starfleet like, it's never felt like it belongs on a Federation starbase. This new interior is actually something you could imagine on a Federation built starbase.
As for finding things, it's a heck of a lot easier on the new station. Not to mention it's nice not just running in circles for things now, this is not DS9.
Join date is wrong, I've actually been around since STO Beta.
True alters don't have a "main". Account wide unlocks for all unique event rewards!!
Comments
considering the size of Starfleet, a large number of box docks is not out of line. and when you consider that a box dock is just a frame with lights and docking hardware to act as a work platform for working on the exterior of a ship, you could easily get a large number of them when accommodating different sizes of ships.
also something to consider, utopia planitia is involved in building ships and major overhauls. and would have much more involved platforms. i thought mckinnly when i saw it in the series was out of place for earth orbit because of utopia planitia. big e needed some serious repairs after her encounter with the borg. box docks would probably not be very useful most of the time.
and having them clustered near ESD makes sense too, work on ships within the docks would more easily be staged out of ESD then from earth.
Honestly, they should let people who have maxed out the Diplomacy/Marauder tree get access to eachothers respective homeworlds, as a diplomatic envoy. :P
agreed, I've wanted this for a long time now. other than the exploration and the shortcut through the gate, its not much of a perk. additionally, maybe we could get access to some of the duty officer assignments for fed/kdf when in that region of space.
That would be nice. It might inspire more people to try out KDF if they see more of them around.
Club 47 is a lot further away from Admiral Quinn's office now. So no I don't want to see players having to go to the club to get their promotions again.
Federation Klingon playable species unlock in the c-store. Nuff said.
I don't disagree with this. I did enjoy the grandeur upon visiting the previously-altered ESD space map, but on the other hand it did feel less interesting and a little immersion-breaking without Earth being a reachable "physical" object in the map. It's unfortunate that the game engine forces this sort of trade off.
Personally, after having played games like Starfleet Command and various other Trek games with unrealistically-sized planets, this has never bothered me so long as planets *seem* big. Though sometimes it doesn't always work out (Legacy had some *very* tiny planets), I have *usually* felt STO's planets are sized well enough to keep me from breaking my visual immersion and helping maintain my suspension of disbelief.
Even with some prior use of a realistically large planet as a background object in STO, it was, as far as I recall, balanced by having other nearby planetary objects to keep us from realizing we could never reach the backdrop planet as part of a mission. This isn't the same for ESD space, which is a social space map basically, "fully explorable" up to a point. Which is why I feel it's important we keep the Earth as an object we can "play around" with, so to speak.
That aside, and I've yet to check Tribble today to comment on other ESD space map changes, but since there aren't a lot of other things populating the ESD space map, is there no room to upscale the Earth model a bit to take up some more of the playable space? This may help make it seem bigger without removing it as an object in the playable game world that we can fly around, I'd think.
i know where I want my promotion to take place.
It looks too busy and cluttered with all the dry docks, there are just way way way way way too many of them.
Also, there is a Bloom issue on the map, for me at least:
High Bloom
Low Bloom
Off Bloom
I don't know how to interpret that.
I was referring to what happened some time last year. For a little while we had KDF players who used an exploit that allowed them access to ESD. Once they beamed into the station the NPCs started attacking them. Often times they would go to Admiral Quinn's office and get him to attack them, and "kite" the Admiral over to the back inside Club 47, hence my response about not wanting players to have to go to Club 47 to talk to Admiral Quinn for their promotion missions to get their free ship tokens and whatnot.
This happened on a regular basis. NPCs out of place all over the station, security officers wandering around with weapons in their hands, etc.
In retaliation federation players use the same type of exploit to beam into first city on Qo'nos and attacked Worf, getting him to move out of place.
I think I saw KDF players on ESD attacking NPCs once or twice but can't remember exactly, and at least once On Qo'nos I saw feds trying to take out the NPCs to get to Worf.
Cryptic had posted a message on the forums not to post how to do it and to report any players we see doing it and that they will be dealt with. Then soon after they fixed the exploit allowing KDF and fed players to visit their enemy's homeworld.
So again, no. I don't want KDF to "visit" ESD or feds to "visit" Qo'nos. I am open to it if Cryptic ever decides to officially end the KDF/fed war and make them allies in the game, which would most likely not happen unless they decide to move the game past the year 2409.
With thousands of starships and all the repairs and refitting constantly going on in STO compared to the 97 total ships in Starfleet during Wolf and the Borg attack, seems we need more drydocks I guess.:D
Player and forumite formerly known as FEELTHETHUNDER
Expatriot Might Characters in EXILE
At last. Now to fight the real threat.
As one of the people that suggested the Quadra Sigma style gigantic planet backdrop, I'm pretty sorry to see it go, though from an aesthetic perspective I probably won't cry to much. I'm of two minds.
The 2D backdrop in my feeling was WAYYY too dark. The dark side wasn't illuminated by city lights and the day side was.
In many ways it was hard to see at a glance that it was Earth.
Quadra Sigma by contrast is enormous and incredibly well lit. It also benefits from being below I think. Something about the scale or maybe the idea that it is down. If you think about it every last one of us is used to a planet being below us.
All I can ask is that the resolution issues get some attention and to make the planet as large as possible. And fix the lights.
I would still like to have a massive beautiful Earth with towering cloud banks and such visible below us. Maybe even visible intercontinental flights, or regular shuttles to and fro.
But I know you have a time table and I appreciate the immense amount of work that you guys have put in trying to get this right. I know that there are other environments that need to be worked on and possibly others that will receive their own updates in the future, so after Club 47 is done it may be a while before you get back to Earth. But thanks. Whatever makes it to Holodeck is gonna be awesome. Thank you for listening to us. It means a lot.
But there is some precedent for it being encircled by smaller docks. Like that shot of Spacedock and the Enterprise in the December 2010 Ships of the Line Calendar by Robert Wilde (which there is no pic of online
http://img.trekmovie.com/images/merchandise/wilde_sotl_2010.jpg
http://img1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20130909211342/startrek/images/0/0b/Earth_Spacedock_under_construction.jpg
I do think the club could use a larger selection of songs than what we have now. Perhaps, a greater variety of music can be added with the revamp of Club 47.
The lights were not off in Europe, the planet was just not rotated enough to SEE Europe.
I have no way of turning lights off on the lit side of a planet. A planet either has city lights, or it doesn't.
I think having drydocks in view with ESD helps to sell the enormous scale of ESD.
Really? I think it makes it feel smaller.
I just want to say that you cant do this
With a sprite. Please leave it the way it is.
Oh and for reference.
I'd say that's pretty perfect.
On that not, let me compliment you guys on the atmosphere. It seems to be a new model and it looks great.
Really?
I suppose that makes a small degree of sense. After all when we have engine offline status our nacelles don't go dark. At least I don't think they do.
I would've thought on the 3D model it was at least by continent. And the static one I thought was just a picture.
Oh well much better to have the lights on on the dark side.
I thought parking our ships near it was more than sufficient.
I can understand the thinking, it just doesn't bear much for me since I know how huge the thing is. And I still have canon images of Spacedock alone in orbit running through my head.
As long as you don't go back to the enormous super spacedock complex that was here before you had Q zap the canon Spacedock into existence I think it'll be just fine.
Please consider giving Earth a better texture. This just looks... unsatisfying:
It is blocky and unrealistic. The colors look unnatural...
Compare:
Also: Why are there so many more lights on Earth? I would assume Roddenberry's humanity to give nature MORE and not less space than it does today.
STOWiki admin.
That would be way more detail than needed, but certainly something better than the current image is required. While I imagine humanity has moved its manufacturing off world, The Moon and Mars getting the Lions share, they aren't going to completely abandon their homeworld and Earth is essentially the Capital of the Federation. Where there are people there are the trappings of civilization.
that's hilarious. im sorry i missed out on that. i can imagine sitting there watching the fun while eating dinner. or helping the npc's repel borders.
obviously, it would need some programming for the game to recognize a foreign faction/aligned character as non-hostile, but it would make the maxed diplomacy more useful to get something other than right of passage and another transwarp destination out of it.
As you can see in the image the new ship readout is very, very, blurry. And also, its been misspelled Hipocrates. I'm assuming this is the same old ship from Task Force Hippocrates, so kudos for continuity.
Thumbs-up for the additional shipyard a ways out from ESD. It's sitting right where I'd expect the S.F. Yards facility to be. While I count myself amongst those who will park my starship in a drydock from time to time, I wonder if the numerous Drydock sets around ESD and one with this new station are sufficient? Having two sets with the second station might be overkill.
I am very concerned that ESD will become cluttered, since the argument is to address the emptiness of the map may I suggest the following;
Have a larger dock construction over San Fransisco to the far right of ESD for the San Fransisico Fleet Yards, have a small dock collection in various size TMP docks on the far left of ESD with a SMALL orbital outpost. The TMP docks would hold the NX Enterprise, Ent-A, Ent-B, the stolen B'rel from ST3, a TOS Constitution, (constellation when available) and other classic ships, this would act as the Starfleet Museum. Add these while having a small selection of docks outside the ESD window only.
This would hold the dual purpose of de-cluttering around ESD but having more assets in the map as well as having canon consistency. These assets already exist, it would merely be a matter of placing them appropriately.
One suggestion could be to put some of these facilities in other areas around Earth Orbit. On the show when we saw McKinley Station it did not seem to be within visual range of ESD. Since we can fly around Earth Again (which is an iffy decision IMO, I liked the backdrop version), you might as well space out the facilities.
Yeah, I know, I know, "there's a map." But, when I "re-decorate" my flat, I don't have to look at a directory to relocate the loo.
Once again, leave well enough alone! Of all the things that need/needed overhauling, ESD was NOT one of them. Wasn't the "next thing on the agenda" supposed to be matching starship bridges with corridors and such? I mean, we now have the default bridge ("Origin," right?) that LOOKS and FEELS like a bridge - more compact, more 'intimate' - but the corridors are still very angular and large enough to drive a Mac truck through everywhere except for the Fed tutorial ship...
Again, the new ESD is beautiful, I admit. But, if your "house" is in order, why remodel? And, just out of curiosity, are you "rebuilding" a home for the Klingons, or are they stuck with the same drapes and carpets as before?
Fleet Commander
Caprica's Revenge
(...actually active since November 2010, which may one day be important to archaeologists, but not to anyone else...)
I agree that there are other things needing looked at, but I completely support them putting the time and effort into this project. It's something they've wanted to do for a while but haven't had the time allocated to them for such a project. The current ESD (even after the improvements made a few years ago) is dark and depressing, it doesn't feel very Starfleet like, it's never felt like it belongs on a Federation starbase. This new interior is actually something you could imagine on a Federation built starbase.
As for finding things, it's a heck of a lot easier on the new station. Not to mention it's nice not just running in circles for things now, this is not DS9.