Huge interiors

seraphimghost · January 2014

Hi there,

I have a question that has been bugging me for quite some time and I'm not sure if it was asked in the past. I did some searching on the forums, couldn't find anything related. Although, I must be honest and say I didn't brake any records searching the forums.

Anyhow, why are the interiors of all of the ships in game sooo big? I feel like I am walking on a station, not a starship. I don't mind every interior (except bridges) being the same template, it just bothers me that they are massive in size and yet the ship is a little Miranda class cruiser. :P

Anyone knows? Please share the wisdom, I need it.

- Have a nice day

unangbangkay · January 2014

seraphimghost wrote: »

Hi there,

I have a question that has been bugging me for quite some time and I'm not sure if it was asked in the past. I did some searching on the forums, couldn't find anything related. Although, I must be honest and say I didn't brake any records searching the forums.

Anyhow, why are the interiors of all of the ships in game sooo big? I feel like I am walking on a station, not a starship. I don't mind every interior (except bridges) being the same template, it just bothers me that they are massive in size and yet the ship is a little Miranda class cruiser. :P

This is a very old problem that will probably not be "fixed". The original template for ship interiors as seen on Fed and KDF ships was created with a bad camera in mind, and likely with the thought in mind of many missions set inside your own ship, which would need a lot of space to run around, hence ship corridors (and most bridges) much larger than seen in the shows or movies.

That didn't pan out, but the assets were in place, so no changes were made. It's a common complaint and every so often someone begs them to "scale down" ship interiors, and they DID have that chance when they revamped the Fed and KDF tutorials. As the Romulan default interior and pack interiors like the Belfast (defiant) and TOS Constitution show, it's technically possible to have a working interior using closer-to-canonical proportions.

But for the Fed tutorials they did keep the overlarge corridor sizes, so I guess that means they're happy with it as-is.

seraphimghost · January 2014

Aha, I see. It makes sense if they have intended to make huge missions inside those corridors, for them to be as big as they are. Then again, they could have made them a bit smaller in the first place, regardless of the scale of missions inside them; but at this point it's just a talk, not a must and should. Am I making sense (?).. :P

I didn't open the thread to beg them to scale them down, or to rant about it; I don't walk that much inside my ship anyway for that to be a real issue. I was just wondering, it was a big mystery in my mind.

Thank you for your reply and clarifying it for me. And regarding the opportunity to do something about it; I have noticed, since I first started playing STO, they don't pay attention to player feedback that much. :P

But I enjoy playing it nonetheless so I don't care that much.

qweeble · January 2014

Due to the nature of the game being 3rd person, environments that would be "to-scale" on the ground don't lend themselves particularly well to being easily traversable; due to the camera. If we had to-scale interiors, your camera would more than likely be bouncing off the roof, seriously disrupting game-play. Combat in to-scale hallways would be incredibly claustrophobic and more annoying than fun. Believe me, we've tried it.

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground. These interiors are generally one-off bridges for various ships.

When it comes to big hallways on ships that don't have combat, we try to reuse as much as possible when it comes to assets like interiors, we build kits of parts that we can assemble, and it is simpler, and less confusing, to use a similar scale across the board.

Also, the "little" Miranda class you mentioned is as big as a 70,000 person stadium! So, it's not thaaaat little.

unangbangkay · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

Due to the nature of the game being 3rd person, environments that would be "to-scale" on the ground don't lend themselves particularly well to being easily traversable; due to the camera. If we had to-scale interiors, your camera would more than likely be bouncing off the roof, seriously disrupting game-play. Combat in to-scale hallways would be incredibly claustrophobic and more annoying than fun. Believe me, we've tried it.

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground. These interiors are generally one-off bridges for various ships.

When it comes to big hallways on ships that don't have combat, we try to reuse as much as possible when it comes to assets like interiors, we build kits of parts that we can assemble, and it is simpler, and less confusing, to use a similar scale across the board.

Also, the "little" Miranda class you mentioned is as big as a 70,000 person stadium! So, it's not thaaaat little.

Thanks for the reply, Jamz!

But yeah, even if the TOS and Belfast interiors are closer to scale, I imagine a mission firefight set on them would be real rough. Indeed, a bunch of missions set in ship or building interiors that ARE close to scale don't have any combat, so that's definitely a factor many folks forget when fantasizing about just how much can happen on a bridge set.

smokeybacon90 · January 2014

There are some already existing small scale interiors that perform pretty well with the camera, like the Belfast bridge and Romulan Flotilla. I don't see why the default bridges and ship decks can't be retrofitted to make them look less oversized.

splitboy · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground. These interiors are generally one-off bridges for various ships.

Did the Team ever consider that this adds to Immersion and might even add to the overal intensity of combat.

Actualy there is a whole branch of game 3rd Person that still Limit the FOV so the Player can be suprised.

Looking back three Year i would understand the decision as the game tried to cater to the masses of casual Players but now with all that grind and repetative Content casual Players aint the audiance anyway.

just my2cent

ethoir · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

Due to the nature of the game being 3rd person, environments that would be "to-scale" on the ground don't lend themselves particularly well to being easily traversable; due to the camera. If we had to-scale interiors, your camera would more than likely be bouncing off the roof, seriously disrupting game-play. Combat in to-scale hallways would be incredibly claustrophobic and more annoying than fun. Believe me, we've tried it.

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground. These interiors are generally one-off bridges for various ships.

When it comes to big hallways on ships that don't have combat, we try to reuse as much as possible when it comes to assets like interiors, we build kits of parts that we can assemble, and it is simpler, and less confusing, to use a similar scale across the board.

Also, the "little" Miranda class you mentioned is as big as a 70,000 person stadium! So, it's not thaaaat little.

^ That. But that doesn't completely excuse the somewhat agoraphobic (I think that's the right description) feeling you get wandering around a ship whose corridors are visually close to two stories tall and quite a bit too wide.

It would be nice to get a 1st person camera that is tied to Shooter Mode so instead of this "over-the-shoulder" look we pretty much go 1st person for the immersion factor (then we get feels of Elite Force going on, I know). If ship interiors shifted you into first person then they may be able to down-scale interiors a bit.

Personally I think its more realistic and immersive to have a 1st person mode because 3rd person can allow you to see someone sneaking up behind you and your character doesn't have eyes in the back of their head. Plus in the middle of combat they've got their attention focused on the person they're trying to kill and maybe the friends said person has behind him trying to catch up.

anazonda · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

Due to the nature of the game being 3rd person, environments that would be "to-scale" on the ground don't lend themselves particularly well to being easily traversable; due to the camera. If we had to-scale interiors, your camera would more than likely be bouncing off the roof, seriously disrupting game-play. Combat in to-scale hallways would be incredibly claustrophobic and more annoying than fun. Believe me, we've tried it.

Yea... i've tried it too, in ST:The Fallen... It was great.

maxvitor · January 2014

I don't think I would care for the head aches that go along with a classic first person shooter mode in the corridors of my ship, I get kind of nauseous when I have to spin around corners a lot in shooters and there's a lot of games I can't play because of it.

anazonda · January 2014

maxvitor wrote: »

I don't think I would care for the head aches that go along with a classic first person shooter mode in the corridors of my ship, I get kind of nauseous when I have to spin around corners a lot in shooters and there's a lot of games I can't play because of it.

The Fallen is 3'd person with to-scale corridors.

I am in the "Getting nauseous" category too, and despite the falling running at 20 FPS, using the Unreal Tournament Engine (thats very old) and not using a flat-screen, I never experienced any discomfort.

mightybobcnc · January 2014

Oh to dream of an actual shooter mechanic. /me sighs wistfully

notrealedna · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

Due to the nature of the game being 3rd person, environments that would be "to-scale" on the ground don't lend themselves particularly well to being easily traversable; due to the camera. If we had to-scale interiors, your camera would more than likely be bouncing off the roof, seriously disrupting game-play. Combat in to-scale hallways would be incredibly claustrophobic and more annoying than fun. Believe me, we've tried it.

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground. These interiors are generally one-off bridges for various ships.

When it comes to big hallways on ships that don't have combat, we try to reuse as much as possible when it comes to assets like interiors, we build kits of parts that we can assemble, and it is simpler, and less confusing, to use a similar scale across the board.

Also, the "little" Miranda class you mentioned is as big as a 70,000 person stadium! So, it's not thaaaat little.

romulan interiors and lockbox ships look having the right scale.

anazonda · January 2014

notrealedna wrote: »

romulan interiors and lockbox ships look having the right scale.

Yea... And the TOS and "almost" the Defiant.

Basically another nail in coffin for the Dev's argument.

seraphimghost · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

Also, the "little" Miranda class you mentioned is as big as a 70,000 person stadium! So, it's not thaaaat little.

Really?
I had no sense how big that little in game ship would be in perspective to something in real life.
Than how huge is Sovereign? Ohh, how massive is Scimatar in perspective to.. I can't imagine, New York City? Or is it too much.. :P

Thank you for reply Jamz.

Unknown · January 2014

This content has been removed.

jeffel82 · January 2014

anazonda wrote: »

Yea... And the TOS and "almost" the Defiant.

Basically another nail in coffin for the Dev's argument.

Not exactly the smoking gun you seem to think it is.

captjamjamz wrote: »

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground.

The TOS and Belfast interiors are unquestionably the sorts of non-combat maps jamjamz was talking about. I've played some combat in the Belfast interior, and yeah, it's tight. I didn't mind it, but I respect the decision to avoid that in the game.

What I do wish the devs would do is set up some sort of internal guideline of what the absolute minimum width and height of a hallway could be while still meeting their gameplay goals, and scale everything to that.

seraphimghost · January 2014

You really suck guys; instead of leaving this thread not to be blemished by ranting and expertise, like all of the others in this section, you, once again, show off your irrationality and immatureness.
I asked a question, one I didn't had an answer and I wanted one. And all you could do is play smart and, by your actions, throw away another simple conversation. Without anything constructive to add.

tk79 · January 2014

I purchased the Belfast and TOS bridges/interiors, and the tighter corridors were much more immersive and enjoyable. The camera issues mentioned in the dev post were not uncomfortable at all; the "claustrophobic" effect was actually quite welcome, as I felt that I was really in a starship, and it was awesome. This is how it should feel. The huge default interiors do not give me that feeling. They do not "convince" me I am inside a starship. It breaks immersion greatly.

The large interiors don't need to be retrofitted. Just add extra, smaller variants. More options = more players satisfied. I know a portion of players like the huge interiors, so they shouldn't be punished. But please, don't use camera issues as an excuse. Players that are looking for more immersion will definitely expect and live with the limitations of smaller interiors.

kagasensei · January 2014

unangbangkay wrote: »

Thanks for the reply, Jamz!

But yeah, even if the TOS and Belfast interiors are closer to scale, I imagine a mission firefight set on them would be real rough. Indeed, a bunch of missions set in ship or building interiors that ARE close to scale don't have any combat, so that's definitely a factor many folks forget when fantasizing about just how much can happen on a bridge set.

That comes down to JamJamz point: It depends on the purpose of the map. Closer-to-scale interiors like the Belfast and TOS Connie are UNFORTUNATELY NOT used for any (non-foundry) story content as of now... If they were, there should be no away team or only one accompanying BOff maximum, and any mob groups should be small aswell. Then I foresee a sufficiently smooth gameplay experience. Unfortunately the only place thise canon interiors are used for actual gameplay right now is the foundry, and that does not permit the option of smaller away team sizes...

tk79 wrote: »

The camera issues mentioned in the dev post were not uncomfortable at all; the "claustrophobic" effect was actually quite welcome, as I felt that I was really in a starship, and it was awesome. This is how it should feel. The huge default interiors do not give me that feeling. They do not "convince" me I am inside a starship. It breaks immersion greatly.

^This!

FAZIT: The Belfast, TOS Connie and other (future) canon interiors can and should be used for official storyline missions and possibly even PvP maps! You just have to make sure, the player's away team size is limited to one or no BOffs at all and mob groups are kept similarly small.

noroblad · January 2014

seraphimghost wrote: »

Hi there,

I have a question that has been bugging me for quite some time and I'm not sure if it was asked in the past. I did some searching on the forums, couldn't find anything related. Although, I must be honest and say I didn't brake any records searching the forums.

Anyhow, why are the interiors of all of the ships in game sooo big? I feel like I am walking on a station, not a starship. I don't mind every interior (except bridges) being the same template, it just bothers me that they are massive in size and yet the ship is a little Miranda class cruiser. :P

Anyone knows? Please share the wisdom, I need it.

- Have a nice day

Interiors seem to be unfinished and random. Some of my early leveling ships had a turbolift, multiple levels, crew everywhere, people to visit and talk to beyond my BOs. My carrier with thousands of crew (recluse) has a single medium sized room. My giant "you can't move for hitting people" scimitar has 2 rooms, the bridge and a weird round room. My romulan shuttle has a better layout than either of these huge ships, both of which are the size of a small town.

anazonda · January 2014

jeffel82 wrote: »

Not exactly the smoking gun you seem to think it is.

The TOS and Belfast interiors are unquestionably the sorts of non-combat maps jamjamz was talking about. I've played some combat in the Belfast interior, and yeah, it's tight. I didn't mind it, but I respect the decision to avoid that in the game.

What I do wish the devs would do is set up some sort of internal guideline of what the absolute minimum width and height of a hallway could be while still meeting their gameplay goals, and scale everything to that.

Actually it is... I've played Enemy heavy missions from the foundry in said interiors, and you know what?

Surprise surprise: It works great... Go ahead.. Try it yourself.

It's simple a weak excuse to not having to go back and redo them... In mordern terms: Lazyness...

wrenfu · January 2014

its like someone said earlier; smaller ship interiors would have nice tense fights in tight spaces. you could even keep the high ceilings, but the corridors being wide enough to drive several trucks side by side through just seems too video gamey and not star trekky enough. of course I have a pretty low opinion of ground combat in STO in general (pugged an elite ground STF lately?), so any change in an other direction would seem like a good move to me (being said, I don't mind the new voth battlezone).

tacofangs · January 2014

In general, giant interiors are a legacy thing. These tend to be old kits that were made during the game's initial development. At the time the prevailing thought was that they would be used for combat, with a full team, and thus needed room for that. They were also tall because of concerns over the camera and letting people see what they were doing. More modern interiors (Romulan ship kit for instance) tend to be more in line with human scale.

noroblad wrote: »

Interiors seem to be unfinished and random. Some of my early leveling ships had a turbolift, multiple levels, crew everywhere, people to visit and talk to beyond my BOs. My carrier with thousands of crew (recluse) has a single medium sized room. My giant "you can't move for hitting people" scimitar has 2 rooms, the bridge and a weird round room. My romulan shuttle has a better layout than either of these huge ships, both of which are the size of a small town.

It simply isn't feasible to make full interiors for all ships. I'd wager that most people get a given ship for it's exterior uses. Interiors take a much longer time to make, and we don't see a return on all of that time and money invested. New ships will usually have a bridge, but not a full interior.

thegreendragoon1 · January 2014

May I offer the suggestion of a generic (non-starfleet/KDF/RR) interior? The interesting thing about the show is that the alien set of the week was just a redress of the alien from last week.

Still, every once in a while I get the urge to design a ship interior in the Foundry.

jayfreelancer · January 2014

thegreendragoon1 wrote: »

Still, every once in a while I get the urge to design a ship interior in the Foundry.

Idea: Competition to allow Foundry authors to design ship interiors, which are then tidied up and incorporated into the game?

Granted it will still be a non-trivial amount of work for Cryptic, but should be less work than doing the entirety from scratch...

kagasensei · January 2014

tacofangs wrote: »

In general, giant interiors are a legacy thing. These tend to be old kits that were made during the game's initial development. At the time the prevailing thought was that they would be used for combat, with a full team, and thus needed room for that. They were also tall because of concerns over the camera and letting people see what they were doing. More modern interiors (Romulan ship kit for instance) tend to be more in line with human scale.

That is exactly why revamps of old missions (e.g., currently the Klingon War story arc, but also further FED mission and some KDF missions) showing Federation ship interiors should incorporate canon interior sets. It would have been awesome to actually visit the TOS-Enterprise in "Past Imperfect" using the existing TOS interior. It would have easily been feasible given the story of the mission (Fight off Klingon boarders without your away team to minimize temporal incursion) but it wasn't done... (yet?). Same goes for the Belfast interior, which could be used to represent ship interiors visited in missions like "Second Star to the Right, Straight on 'til Morning". The layout of the USS DeWitt is a just one of many prime examples of ugly, illogical and over-sized ship interiors.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/File:Map_U.S.S._DeWitt.jpg

It could easily be replaced with a Defiant class-ship using the Belfast interior which is then boarded with a limited away team.

I sincerely hope using the existing canon interiors in (revamped/new) official story missions or even ground PvP maps is something Cryptic thinks about. And I also hope the new Romulan interiors are going to be heavily used when the Romulan Mystery FED-story arc is going to be remastered soon.

zeuxidemus001 · January 2014

captjamjamz wrote: »

Due to the nature of the game being 3rd person, environments that would be "to-scale" on the ground don't lend themselves particularly well to being easily traversable; due to the camera. If we had to-scale interiors, your camera would more than likely be bouncing off the roof, seriously disrupting game-play. Combat in to-scale hallways would be incredibly claustrophobic and more annoying than fun. Believe me, we've tried it.

We make some interiors to scale, but it depends on the intent, and even those are somewhat annoying to navigate through without zooming your camera most of the way in, and keeping it fairly low to the ground. These interiors are generally one-off bridges for various ships.

When it comes to big hallways on ships that don't have combat, we try to reuse as much as possible when it comes to assets like interiors, we build kits of parts that we can assemble, and it is simpler, and less confusing, to use a similar scale across the board.

Also, the "little" Miranda class you mentioned is as big as a 70,000 person stadium! So, it's not thaaaat little.

lol this reminds me when I got my oldest kid an xbox and tried to play halo 4 it felt claustrophobic.

I think my biggest gripes is how our bridges and some interiors don't have much of any functionality.

The other art aspect that is somewhat bothersome too is like the D7 and the vor'cha they look like they are too thin some federation ships somewhat seem this way too but can't remember which ones top of my head.

Edit: Most likely if Cryptic ever wants to make money off interiors though specific missions would need to be setup maybe like dynamic events that occur in guild wars 2 and defiance and make that something specific. Just an example kind of like the movie first contact where they had to fight the borg on the ship. I'd say certain areas of the game this would occur in. Maybe like an option to either participate in mission or a dismissal having the crew deal with the problem if you aren't into that kind of gameplay.

eldarion79 · January 2014

kagasensei wrote: »

That is exactly why revamps of old missions (e.g., currently the Klingon War story arc, but also further FED mission and some KDF missions) showing Federation ship interiors should incorporate canon interior sets. It would have been awesome to actually visit the TOS-Enterprise in "Past Imperfect" using the existing TOS interior. It would have easily been feasible given the story of the mission (Fight off Klingon boarders without your away team to minimize temporal incursion) but it wasn't done... (yet?). Same goes for the Belfast interior, which could be used to represent ship interiors visited in missions like "Second Star to the Right, Straight on 'til Morning". The layout of the USS DeWitt is a just one of many prime examples of ugly, illogical and over-sized ship interiors.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/File:Map_U.S.S._DeWitt.jpg

It could easily be replaced with a Defiant class-ship using the Belfast interior which is then boarded with a limited away team.

I sincerely hope using the existing canon interiors in (revamped/new) official story missions or even ground PvP maps is something Cryptic thinks about. And I also hope the new Romulan interiors are going to be heavily used when the Romulan Mystery FED-story arc is going to be remastered soon.

I understand your argument and agree with it until you want to use a small Defiant-class interior for a ship that is generally a Typhoon-class or similar size. (Ship nitpicker in me)

I would say a visuals revamp a few old missions per season.

reximuz · January 2014

splitboy wrote: »

Did the Team ever consider that this adds to Immersion and might even add to the overal intensity of combat.

Small spaces + collision = suck.

lucho80 · January 2014

tacofangs wrote: »

In general, giant interiors are a legacy thing. These tend to be old kits that were made during the game's initial development. At the time the prevailing thought was that they would be used for combat, with a full team, and thus needed room for that. They were also tall because of concerns over the camera and letting people see what they were doing. More modern interiors (Romulan ship kit for instance) tend to be more in line with human scale.

It simply isn't feasible to make full interiors for all ships. I'd wager that most people get a given ship for it's exterior uses. Interiors take a much longer time to make, and we don't see a return on all of that time and money invested. New ships will usually have a bridge, but not a full interior.

Just one issue, the number of ships where you can't display trophies is getting bigger each release. At least make a ready room in each ship with a display case.

Huge interiors

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