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New bridgeless 3-pack Interior
theanothername
Member Posts: 1,504 Arc User
The comming dedicated Intrepid interior got me thinking... why so niche and overspecialized? Since I saw how good the interiors can be on a fleet mates TOS interior I really wanted something equally good but modern for my federation ships. And actually had high hopes that the next release might be a modern 3pack; considering the big amount of starfleet ships that would have made the most sense economically.
What followed was a dedicated defiant interior; since the rarely used "offhand ship" of my fed is one I got that & its great. But silly on every other ship but those from the defiant family.
Now the next niche thing get released in form of the Interpid interior. From what I saw on the missions & experience on other new interiors I guess that also would be a very cool one. Maybe even a bit more usable outside the Intrepid family but still overspezialized & since bridge swapping is not possible there you never get rid of the Intrepid feeling no matter what ship you fly.
And the salt to that wound is that whenever more interiors are talked about the answer is usually they don't sell well enough... Oh really, no kidding; who would has guessed that?
I am indeed happy for all fans/users of the Constitution, the Defiant & the Intrepid classes. From my experience with my Defiant its a really nice "finally byebye generic interior" feeling but I think something should be done to all the other classes.
Please to the powers that make stuff like this possible: create a new modern (TNG+) bridgeless 3-pack (small, medium, large) interior in the high quality you have shown multible time you can do. I don't have an Intrepid class; im not intersted in that ships playstyle & I have no use of an bridge dedicated to it no matter how cool it looks.
What followed was a dedicated defiant interior; since the rarely used "offhand ship" of my fed is one I got that & its great. But silly on every other ship but those from the defiant family.
Now the next niche thing get released in form of the Interpid interior. From what I saw on the missions & experience on other new interiors I guess that also would be a very cool one. Maybe even a bit more usable outside the Intrepid family but still overspezialized & since bridge swapping is not possible there you never get rid of the Intrepid feeling no matter what ship you fly.
And the salt to that wound is that whenever more interiors are talked about the answer is usually they don't sell well enough... Oh really, no kidding; who would has guessed that?
I am indeed happy for all fans/users of the Constitution, the Defiant & the Intrepid classes. From my experience with my Defiant its a really nice "finally byebye generic interior" feeling but I think something should be done to all the other classes.
Please to the powers that make stuff like this possible: create a new modern (TNG+) bridgeless 3-pack (small, medium, large) interior in the high quality you have shown multible time you can do. I don't have an Intrepid class; im not intersted in that ships playstyle & I have no use of an bridge dedicated to it no matter how cool it looks.
Post edited by theanothername on
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like the thousand other things that are already programmed, designed and just sitting around that the players will never get to have.
The Dahar Master overcoat comes to mind.
TLDR: We haz money. Cryptic won't sell. We mad :mad: !!!
Seriously though, Mr. and Ms. Cryptic Associate, take a look at what this thread is about and please begin a drive towards making the npc stuff something we can aquire.
I'm not really sure what you mean by "highly specialized?"
The problem with this idea is the underlying structure for bridges/interiors.
When you click "Visit my brdige" or whatever, it takes you to another map. That map has the bridge you have selected on it. However, it also contains the full interior associated with that bridge. In the case of bridges that let you select multiple interiors, EACH AND EVERY one of those interiors is also copied onto that map. SO, ANY interior you want access to, has to be copied on to the bridge map. We cannot copy every interior onto every bridge map. This would make the bridge maps take FOREVER to load, and would bloat the game's file sizes significantly.
IMO, the only way you will ever get to pick your bridge and your interior independently, is if/when we do a full restructuring of bridge/interior maps, where they are completely separated. That would hypothetically allow you to use your say, intrepid interior with your Suliban bridge, etc. However, this also means you would get a load screen any time you went from your bridge to your interior, or vice versa. The problem is that that is a huge undertaking, and would need to be the focus of a full season, or more. Not that I think that it's impossible, just not planned in the short term.
Opinions? Would you be ok with load screens between your bridge and your interior if it meant you could mix and match more freely?
Although this is not worth a entire season IMHO but would be good to get some updated interior models etc
Well, I don't think it would be worth it to dedicate a full season just for that unless you had something else going on with it. However, simply for the sake of the discussion, I would absolutely be fine with loading screens if it meant I could mix and match like that.
Mine Trap Supporter
I'd be totally okay with that.
If it allows me to select a different bridge and interiors for my, say, Recluse, and other Lockbox ships? Even better.
STO Screenshot Archive
Personally, I don't mind bridges which come with linked interiors. It makes sense because I understand how the maps are created and I know that if I was making them, I'd do the same thing for the same reasons. Loading screens are a pain in the backside.
What I would like to see though, is perhaps an updated 'standard' interior. By that I mean, the one that links to the new Origin bridge and 99% of the other bridges available via the C-Store. Currently, they all look very outdated compared to the newer designs. Plus, if you were to change them around it'd be nice if 'small', 'medium', and 'large' interiors had slightly different rooms. Just now they all have the exact same rooms but just different corridor layouts. The mess hall and Engineering are two rooms in particular I don't think fit well with the 'small' interior for example.
If I understand the process of how the maps are stored I don't think that would require more loading or file size really, would it?
If its just the load screen between the bridge and the rest of the interior i could see that working, as long as while not on the bridge the remaining interior space loads as it does now. (I.E. the only load screen would be from bridge to sub levels but while in sub levels there is no load screen when switching from crew deck to engineering deck)
And if that's the case i would like more choices than small medium and large cause even the small one is HUGE. i wish the rooms and such shrank in size not just the space in between them. I know that there are a lot of alien ships that don't conform to a specific faction but itf we can get some color options on interior even general ones would be nice.
On a side note every time you load into the interior the officers beam in, it really breaks immersion with that.
If "load screen" = "turbolift sequence" then "yes" else "no"
I also don't know what you mean by the games filesize becoming bloated. It would be a matter of larger .map files wouldn't it? (obviously making up the .map extension since I dunno what format your maps are in). Textures are textures, and would be loaded regardless of where you load it from. I doubt you duplicate the textures from say texture1.dds in folder "textures" to texture1.dds in folder "texturesbridge". And if you do, why? Why not load textures from the same location/files instead of making multiple copies of the exact same texture?
If there is ever to be a restructuring on how "Player interiors" are handled, would it not be better to actually have someone put their foot down, and make it happen, sooner rather than later? Unless the thought would be to scrap the entire work that came before (on bridges like the Intrepid), and start again. Which would be incredibly stupid, having to do the same work twice.
The more interiors you guys create, without fixing the underlying issues of how player interiors are currently handled, the more difficult (and less likely) that any such fix would ever be made.
Sadly, I think that's part of the NPC spawning algorithm, as any NPCs that spawns on a brand new instance (which is what happening when you go to the bridge) does the beam-in animation. This was most noticeable in the old Feature Episodes (before remastering) and the randomly generated maps in the former Exploration system.
(UFP) Ragnar
You'd have to talk to the systems guys, but you could probably make a character specific 'mini-foundry' that runs entirely on code, the player doesn't have access to it. Instead the bridges/interiors they have unlocked unlock those bridges/interiors on the assets of the mini-foundry. When a player goes into the 'select your bridge/interior' there's an extra option for 'customization' that is actually the mini-foundry. They pick their bridge/interior options, and maybe stuff like interior customization, trophies, whatever. Then they get to click a toggle- 'enable custom bridge/interior', which when clicked will intercept 'beam to bridge' with 'beam to mini-foundry-mission'.
Then when all that's done, it publishes the foundry mission but only makes it available to characters with those features unlocked. Players would be able to pick from published mini-foundry-bridge-missions they qualify for on the customization screen. If a player tries to create a combination that is already published, it tells them and just loads that one. Because it's pre-set and all done via coding, it could hook up all the consoles and buttons based on a algo that identifies the map and produces the code procedurally.
It would be so worth the inconvenience of a loading screen to be able to mix and match!! Then it'd be more practical for y'all to give us, say, the corridors from the tutorial. That'd be epic. And maybe you could come up with new stories, etc. that take place in the new interiors, thus justifying their expense. I think it's a great idea.
This sounds more like you want to take the current costume tailor and create a ship interior version of it. For what its worth, I think there's more involved than just simply adding code. But who knows? Maybe it will happen this way or they'll find another approach.
(UFP) Ragnar
I think it's a waste of time and resources. There isn't anything to do on your ship that you can't do elsewhere. I like the new interior and all, but I would not want to waste a season updating interior maps of ships. I would rather see that kind of time poured into a map like DS9 or adding other homeworlds and exploration to the game.
I am buying the voyager bundle primarily for the t6 ship and the interiors but I don't want to waste design time for that to be done for others unless its part of mission development.
Lifetime Sub since June 2010
We could see the Tutorial interior added, and the Adapted Cruiser interior added.
Especially the latter, as all they'd need to do is add an elevator to the bridge we already have, and remove all mission specific npcs and replace them with generic interior npcs. All which can be done in a map copy.
Even if I'm not a hardcore roleplayer, I LIKE my ship having an interior. I like being able to walk the corridors and 'meet' my crew (even if they are non-interacting NPCs). I like being able to look at reminders of my exploits - okay, maybe they're not Picard's hor'gahn or Sisko's baseball, but they're still reminders of what my characters have been through. I like making comments about 'Bridge', 'Deck Five', etc. when I enter the turbolift. If it means more customization, more opportunity to make my ship feel like 'my' ship, I believe I'm for it.
Actually, I've been pushing for an 'Interiors Revamp' for a while now anyway - the chairs at the poker table in the FED interior lounge are so close to the table you can't sit in them, we're stuck with that stupid fishtank (treat it like a ground trophy hardpoint, allow us to replace it with bookshelves or a bed for our cat/raptor/targ pup/sehlat cub, something like that), so many of the newer achievements over the last couple years have no trophies to show for them... For that matter, if bridges and interiors were seperated, then we might finally be able to get Nausicaan, Orion, Gorn, Caitian and Vulcan bridges and/or interiors for our ships...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Wouldn't mind at all, in fact what I would really love to see is Context Sensetive load screens retur, to add a little more immersion to the game, rather than just random screenshots.
Furthermore, I don't think there are many players who would complain if the bridges/interiors were removed for a revamp if that was what was necessary to make them functional and customizable. Providing the removal was only for a short while.
The real trick, as you've said before Taco, is making bridges/interiors worthwhile and useful so that players visit them and use them. As it is, there's no real reason to use interiors, and while I buy every pack that comes out, I know that I rarely go visit them once the novelty wears off.
MAKING INTERIORS USEFUL:
REPAIRING AND HEALING -
You could have DOFF missions in engineering and Sickbay to repair damage to your ship and heal yourself and your crew. Get inoculations that help prevent toxic damage or something to strengthen your turrets and defenses.
BUFFS AND BONUSES -
These could be career path specific "mini-games" that a player could perform (or invite someone from one of the other career paths aboard to perform) that increased certain attributes on your ship. They would last for a while, but would atrophy over time, so that you'd have to go back in and do them again from time to time, but the buff varies by quality, so you could always improve the stat bonus. Just some ideas off the top of my head:
Engineering - Starfleet engineers are notorious for tweaking the engines on their ships to improve performance. Boosting warp core efficiency so that you don't waste dilithium and increasing hull strength and structural integrity would be some examples of what engineers can do.
Tactical - Increasing weapons efficiency and shield strength, or even scheduling drills to improve skills that repel boarding parties. Any offensive skills could be improved by tactical officers.
Science - In addition to buffing science skills, maybe buffs that improve sensor scans so that you could potentially gain a bonus to resources.
Medical - Increase crew survivability and crew recovery rate.
R&R BUFFS -
This is something that I've seen done well in other games, so why not include it here? What if you got a temporary stat bonus for going to your ship interiors and relaxing in your mess hall with your crew? Or better yet, playing a game of poker with either your BOFFs or with other players.
So there's some ideas. If you want to do a revamp, I'm all for it, but you should do it right, and make interiors useful and not just cosmetic. It'll build immersion in the game as well. In my opinion it's a win-win.
I would like to add that they did do an "experiment" of this in which they placed beneficial doff assignments throughout a ship's interior. You have to run to Engineering to process Alien Artifacts and you can submit the old crafting materials for analysis in the Science Lab. Unfortunately, they then got a lot of complaints from some players that they didn't enjoy running around to do all of those doff assignments and as the captain they should be able to do all of that from their ready room.
So now you can do all of that from your terminal in your ready room.
(UFP) Ragnar
I'm also ok with it being a season's goal. Seriously, please make a season that's almost entirely devoted to the art of the game. Taco, you and your team all do such a fantastic job, that I'd love to see what you could come up with for new maps and locations, as well as what adjustments you'd feel are needed on existing maps.
After a full expansion such as DR, it would be a good time to have one of the upcoming seasons focused on parts of the game that are not explicitly game mechanics. There's been so much introduced pre-DR and with DR that there is plenty of room for adding more environment.
Moreso, I really want to be able to unlock and use the Odyssey, Dyson, Obelisk, Voth, or Hirogen Bridges on other ships, even if it takes longer to load. This is especially true for my Romulans, who have almost no other bridge choice, much less interior.
I'm aware of that, but most of the complaints were due to the fact that DOFF missions are "dailies" and jumping around to so many maps to get those sorted can be a pain.
What I was suggesting would provide buffs and such to improve ship and crew performance and wouldn't necessarily be "dailies" (we have enough of those as it is in my opinion) but perhaps a weekly or twice weekly maintenance mission.
They already take FOREVER to load, it seems, haha! Those and the fleet holdings maps.
I hate load screens, but I'd definitely be ok with them in this case, as long it's not taking me three minutes to load my bridge, then three more minutes to load my interior... Overall load times should decrease if you do this, shouldn't they? Since each bridge and interior can now be its own map rather than one huge one with all of them?
Now: yeah I don't mind load screens.
Later: WTF CRAPTIC!!!! so many load screens,you guys suck as programers, You SUCK!!! it takes forever to load onto a simple map I made!!!! I'm not logging in again ever until you fix this disaster of an update.
Don't waste your time Taco it's not worth it.
I meant the seperated way it usually is with the ships in the game outside a few noteable exceptions like the Intrepid interior.
Where you click on interior:
http://s483.photobucket.com/user/trueanothername/media/STO/ShipYard1.jpg.html?sort=3&o=0
Choose one of 40+ bridges (depending how much additional you bought):
http://s483.photobucket.com/user/trueanothername/media/STO/ShipYard2.jpg.html?sort=3&o=1
And then choose the layout:
http://s483.photobucket.com/user/trueanothername/media/STO/ShipYard3.jpg.html?sort=3&o=2
The last part, the one with the large, medium, small is what I and probably a lot of others would love to see expanded by some high quality interiors like the Intrepid one; but without reducing the first screen; the one with the bridges, to just one bridge.
Sokath, his eyes opened! (Or just YESYESYES!
It's still a list of chores to do that you have to grind through to get the buffs you want. I'm not saying its necessarily a bad thing but its one of the aspects as to why a meaningful ship interior is a complicated discussion.
(UFP) Ragnar
If the team works on getting down the time load screens take, then yes, I would like to mix and match my bridges and interiors. Would the smaller maps increase the speed for loading them? The smaller maps for ship interiors could help us to getting more of a full starship interior that felt more like our own. If i could have Voyager's Sickbay with the Defiant's Engineering, and the TOS bridge, I would like that. Add or sell add on packs for the maps like shuttle bays, galley's, ready rooms, and more to literally pick maps for our deck by deck feel for our own ship.
Edit: Possibly using something like a simple map editor for the ships tailor when selecting interiors, players could choose what maps go on what levels and label the buttons that appear in the Turbolift so the player knows what is where.
Deck 1: Bridge
Deck 5, Holodeck
Deck 10: Engineering
Deck 15: Shuttle Bay
Depending on the map size, possibly multiple mini maps per deck. Most bridges have an extra couple of doors. Players could bind a Ready Room map to one of the extra doors not being used for Turbolifts or even make those extra unused doors something else useful like a Transporter Room or Lounge. I guess the point I am trying to make is something modular using interior maps so the player can design an interior using multiple different interior pieces to create something more unique to their ship. Having these possible to save as well to quick load onto another ship would help a lot also.
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But we are not talking about about some new tech or something the players have not already encountered before.
Its about adding some new shinys to a very negleted list of interior layouts that are made with more than just one shipclass in mind.