We have suggested drawable interiors to Haxus in-game and he thought it a reasonable idea. As a supplement to the existing system, I think so too.
I would, however, be strongly against its replacing the existing system. You spend almost all of your time around ships inside them. Most of the value of the new designer is its freedom to create interesting interiors, not exteriors. Boarding a totally alien craft you've never seen before, not knowing if their species are water-dwelling, spaceborne, two inches tall, forty feet tall, should be an enormous challenge for a poor human space marine. It can be an exciting discovery, even if it gets you killed a lot. Boarding a craft built for ants is, in any space opera worth its salt, probably going to be impossible.
Perhaps the challenge could be better balanced by some sort of analysis probe. If shields are down, or starting from inside the ship, you can commence a full scan, which would reveal the interior layout: essentially giving you a copy of the room void parts and door parts to review in the designer. Would give some value to stealth ships and recon in the future. Or a handheld scanner to reveal door locations and voids in your immediate vicinity. Helmet HUD could help with this; it's already approaching that function with lifesign detection. A team that had worked for it could board efficiently, one that hadn't would get stuck and slaughtered.
Creating interiors is much easier now than it was before; making it harder again would be a step back. I used to go through dozens of prototypes in the old designer: had to change room numbers, room was illegal because surrounded by another room, room had glass windows everywhere I couldn't change and made hull look weird, had to create ten rooms just to make pillars or railing, everything lagged to heck while deleting etc. A new room, if it's a simple textured shape, takes under a minute to make in blender and import, complete with associated voids. Copying a door takes seconds. Granted, adding windows, stairs and things will slow you down. But that was the case in the old designer too, if you wanted any fine control. You'd have to carefully intersperse different room types to get windows where you wanted them (groan).
I'm fairly sure someone clever could make an addon for blender that makes rooms out of a floor plan. Then it could just make a shrunk copy of the room for the voids. Any takers?
I would, however, be strongly against its replacing the existing system. You spend almost all of your time around ships inside them. Most of the value of the new designer is its freedom to create interesting interiors, not exteriors. Boarding a totally alien craft you've never seen before, not knowing if their species are water-dwelling, spaceborne, two inches tall, forty feet tall, should be an enormous challenge for a poor human space marine. It can be an exciting discovery, even if it gets you killed a lot. Boarding a craft built for ants is, in any space opera worth its salt, probably going to be impossible.
Perhaps the challenge could be better balanced by some sort of analysis probe. If shields are down, or starting from inside the ship, you can commence a full scan, which would reveal the interior layout: essentially giving you a copy of the room void parts and door parts to review in the designer. Would give some value to stealth ships and recon in the future. Or a handheld scanner to reveal door locations and voids in your immediate vicinity. Helmet HUD could help with this; it's already approaching that function with lifesign detection. A team that had worked for it could board efficiently, one that hadn't would get stuck and slaughtered.
Creating interiors is much easier now than it was before; making it harder again would be a step back. I used to go through dozens of prototypes in the old designer: had to change room numbers, room was illegal because surrounded by another room, room had glass windows everywhere I couldn't change and made hull look weird, had to create ten rooms just to make pillars or railing, everything lagged to heck while deleting etc. A new room, if it's a simple textured shape, takes under a minute to make in blender and import, complete with associated voids. Copying a door takes seconds. Granted, adding windows, stairs and things will slow you down. But that was the case in the old designer too, if you wanted any fine control. You'd have to carefully intersperse different room types to get windows where you wanted them (groan).
I'm fairly sure someone clever could make an addon for blender that makes rooms out of a floor plan. Then it could just make a shrunk copy of the room for the voids. Any takers?