4Game

Greeting commanders, with Odyssey just around the corner i wanted to start this discussion thread about how ship interiors can and can't work. I'm a huge fan of the idea and I know it was something the developers mention eons ago, but I can also see how complicated it could be.
The purpose of this discussion is to go over how it could be done simply, but also all the complications it could have to deal with.
I'll start with some examples.

Firstly, the easiest way to add ship interior to space legs would be to completely ignore optional internals. Just give each ship its own relative space. A couple small rooms for sidewinder, a huge multi floor crew deck for anaconda, that sort of thing. There would be many opportunities for player customisation inside, to give each its own personal touch, and given the various shapes of the ships, most interiors would be quite unique.

Secondly, with optional internals. I can't think of an easy way to add this, if im assuming correctly that people want to be able to walk to all their optional internals. The way I see it, each ships compartment sizes would differ from another (I mean if every class 2 slot looked the same in every ship then fine, but the ship's shapes vary so much i can't see that. Might be a scale issue). So basically every optional compartment slot in every ship will have to have a design made for every possible option internal that could be placed in it. That's a crazy amount of work. Especially if each model required damaged/destroyed/powered/unpowered versions.

To further complicate it, would there be a visible interaction between the cargo bay and cargo racks? What if you put your cargo racks on the opposite side of the ship from the cargo bay? If I were mining and had collector limpets gathering ore, could I walk down to my cargo bay, observe the limpets bringing up the ore, see the ore placed into the refinery I have installed, then added to my cargo once it reaches 1 ton? That's about as intricate as I can imagine.

Also, any added internal space would need to be rendered in some degree at all times while flying around. What kind of strain would that add to performance. I can see npcs not having interiors, but could a lot of players flying about potentially cause problems? If you were down at the bottom of your interior and your ship came under attack, would there be a recall option to get to your chair asap?

Please bring all your thoughts. Simplify the solution or complicate the f*** out of it, id love it all.