Thank you for your well thought out feedback. My general policy is that I try to read everything. But I generally make no promises on what will make it into future updates.

Some of your suggestions are fairly small things that could definitely improve the map. Some are more work. And some others still will never happen.


Lockdown:
Concerning adding a lockdown button to the bridge area. I get it, but I think it's better this way. I think it's more fun to have some controls of the ship elsewhere so that you have to work together with other players and delegate. So players should have a suitable communication structure so that command can give their subordinates orders to work the ship. Lockdown is one such thing. And I think having it in the traffic control room makes sense. If I ever make a dedicated security room, then I'd also add it there tho.
About adding extra doors to it. On the one hand, I've been a bit lazy in updating the lockdown because it's always a hassle to work with and make sure everything works as it's supposed to. Especially since it interacts a lot with the generator shutdown. So potentially I could add some more doors to it. BUT I have a rule for lockdown and generator shut down. It's a role play device, and I try to make sure players can always navigate around the locked doors so that they can lift the lockdown or turn the main generator back on. So there's always a route to walk around, generally through vents and maintenance tunnels. And there should never be a room that locks a player out of the map completely. So for spawn I think it's better if it's not connected for example.
Adding some additional text might also be a good idea.

Reactor/main generator:
Sounds for the beams is a great idea and if I find a suitable sound I'll probably add that. And I'll try and check out that tatooine map you mentioned for some possible inspiration. The lack of railings is by design. Yup, the empire was terrible and didn't look after their workers. More immersive this way. I also intentionally put one of the walkways super close to the rotating turbine so that there would be work accidents.
By engine I assume you mean the room outside of the generator. The map doesn't feature the ship engine at all. There's only a few consoles behind the generator interior that would be associated with the engine. Anyway, the sound you mention, I'm not sure what you mean. I don't remember ever putting a sound there. There's a sound I use for some console screens. But other than that there's not too many localized ambient ship sounds. Except the giant generator of course. And in some older versions, there was a bug that made it so that the hyperspace sound kept looping forever across the map.

Training/sparring/spawn room:
I'm not removing the locker room. I think this is better for immersion. It makes sense to have a more private place to change to go and train. I actually made a new prop that I haven't added to the map yet. In future versions there will also be some sinks in the locker room. BUT I do kinda agree that it sucks if new players misbehave and there's a blind spot in the security. So perhaps you're right that it would be better to move the doorway out of the locker room into the main room instead. That way, there's still the immersion of having a locker room but without the big drawbacks. Yes, players could then still hide there, but you would have a better view of players standing in front of the doorway.
An idea that I also had, which perhaps the map is still not entirely suited for, would mostly require players to try something else. Yes, right now, the sparring room is the default spawn room, and I've also designed it for that purpose. BUT, what if players spawned off world as a neutral party, looking to join the empire as recruits? And then someone from the empire would pick up the new recruits by ship and bring them to the ISD for training. I suppose the space station and perhaps the planets could be used for that. But the space station probably lacks good secured rooms. And on the planets, players would have to build their own little base with some security to prevent new players from wandering. But if it's something people are interested in, I could perhaps try and add some features that could facilitate this.


Turbo lasers:
I had a LOT of help with the turbolasers. I'm terrible at triggers and such. So big changes like that are probably never happening. I think KingPommes did make an improvement to his turbolaser system later on. So perhaps I can update to the newer version. But other than that, this is what it is. And the invisible wall you mention is probably just the map edge. Sadly Source maps cannot be made bigger than this. Which is why I have the alternate infinite map version that makes the map edges into looping teleports.

Brig:
Not sure about windows in the doors. Don't think we ever see something like that in any of the reference. This design is mostly based on the brig we see in the Death Star.
Interrogation room, yes. I've been wanting to add that for a while. The room is already there, to the side. But I need to make a custom prop for the torture chair. And I just haven't gotten around to that. I'd use the episode from Rebels as reference. So yeah, perhaps in the future.

Lights:
The Source engine is old and it's not great at dynamic lights. So I've always figured it's better and prettier to just not have them. Especially not something shipwide. Props that light up with some cool lights, like the alarm lights, yeah maybe in the future. Dynamic lights that change the white lights? Nope.

Planets:
Sound on planets, yes. That would be better. Right now the map doesn't have a soundscape, which is probably the best way to do that. Just haven't gotten around to it.

Dear LT,

Thanks ever so much for the reply.

Fair enough on the lockdown element.

Yes those beams, I have called them Energy Conduits that essentially transfer energy around the ship and to storage. I like the fact that they can kill the player, so some kind of dangerous humming electricy sound would be quite fitting.

The sound I am referring to (that I am sure was there many years ago mind) - can now be found at the front of the ship where the 2x tie fighter maintenance walk ways are. There are two pipes and some steam valves on them. They make a great noise. I suppose if anything, more ambient noises near other systems would be very cool. I think sound has more impact sometimes than the visual side of things.

Keeping the locker room - yes fair enough. The lockable door simply (I say simply but this is my ignorance of making maps!) being moved to the threshold between the locker room and the spar room - would make a big difference.

That said, I like the idea of players spawning on a planet, and that can be set manually by server owners anyway. There are many ground based servers that do something similar, mostly the ones that are sort of city RP but set in Star Wars. The thing is, your map is in my opinion the best SW map ever made and it is a classic. I know the map is at the edge of what is possible within GMOD in terms of size. I suppose the idea dream would be one of the planets to be Mos Mesric but I know that can't really happen haha!

Really what could happen is just recruits/new server players start off in one of the hanger bays as if having just arrived. The main issue though in having an off ship recruit site (which for me personally I am all for) - is that most players want to get stuck in as soon as possible and an offsite spawn has in the past, I believe put people off as it adds in another step. I think the trend also seems to be that if training goes on for longer than just a couple of minutes, most people do not seem interested in that, which I can of course understand, despite being more of a milsim player myself. I think that is why your spar room has always been the spawn room as it is often convenient and has the firing range built in.

Fair enough on the turbo lasers. We tend to RP them using console commands anyway from the pits on the Bridge.

Fair enough on the brig windows. There is no source material to back them up, it would just be artistic license really.

Fair on the lights and planets too. Any extra bits are bonuses at this point.

I had other ideas too, for example, on some maps there is like a mini game to restore lights after a power cut. That is probably a lot of work though.

Well whatever you add or don't - I look forward to the update when its ready.

Thanks a lot.

Pitchkins

P.S Re the tie fighter rails, are there any plans to expand their capability please? It would be cool if Ties could be sent all the way to the different launch bays. Also, in the secondary hanger bay, It would be good if the grapple arm could go down lower so it could pick up ties from the deck so the pilot could leave the tie there and go down to the pilots mess.

The launch and recovery is a bit confusing it seems.

I would think that a sortie would look like this:

The ties launch from the launch bay
Once the sortie is complete, the Ties would need to fly into the SHB one at a time
The pilot gets out when aligned with the grappling arm
The tie would be grappled, taken to recharge/repair bay/worked on by techies
Then once done, the tie is sent back to a launch bay ready for the next sortie.

I know this means that craft recovery is longer, but I am trying to think of how the process would work currently. Even if there was some kind of magic "store tie" button next to the recharge bay that makes the tie disappear and respawn aligned at a launch bay, that could help. I am aware this is probably all very difficult to sort.

Thanks

A TIE crane with more features would be possible yes. But it would be a hassle. And there are definitely problems. Since it's done in Half Life 2, switching tracks should be doable. But I'd have to look into it. So in theory, there could be a button to change the direction the crane goes by switching the track. Or alternatively, I can make the other crane move as well from the other TIE service station. But that would have it's own problem since the cranes shouldn't bump into each other.
And sadly moving the crane to the actual TIE launch bays is not an option. Because LFS sucks and LFS TIEs will explode if I rotate the crane with a TIE in it, it has to stay at the same rotation.
the trouble with making the crane go lower down is that the floor at the hangar is a different height than the TIE service bay. Right now, the crane is only meant to grab TIEs from the service bay and drop them in the hangar. Although it is possible to fly into the hangar, and without landing, letting the crane grab the TIE. I think there's a way to make the crane go down lower at the hangar. Not sure tho.

Ideally, yes, it would be cool if that's all possible. In reality some of it is not possible with LFS, some of it might be doable but not ideal, and other things might be doable and work fine with a lot of extra work.



On a side note, you mentioned Mos Mesric as a location. Right now I do have my Imperial Prefab base addon of course. Which can be used to quickly make a variety of different bases. But in theory it would also be doable to make a set of props so that players could very quickly just make a Tatooine themed town from a set of prefab props. In which case, you could just make an entire town in the empty planet area in like 15 minutes. I don't have any plans. But it's an interesting idea to consider maybe.

Dear Lord Trilobite,

Yes thank for that info, I am trying to write some Tie post flight protocol you see. The Starfighter corp has always tended to struggle as a regiment for the most part, so more things to do for them would help, but I appreciate it is a lot of work. Yes I thought about the other station being active too, I was able to taxi the Tie back from the Tie Station easily enough at a slow speed so that is a good idea and would then allow for the Ties to be recharged and stored even quicker.

I note there are three rails in the SHB for the Tie Crane, one in the middle (which is the currently active one of course) and then two either side of it. I have measured it up and it seems there would be room for both to work simultaneously and that way you could even do away with the middle rail? I suppose the key thing there that would be really cool and inspire team work, is indeed if the crane could deploy to a height that could pick up Ties from the SHB deck, with maybe some markings where the Tie needs to land in there for the crane to align?

I suppose the alternative to this and the bigger job would be to activate both Tie Service Stations, but spin the entire service station to an orientation so that you wouldn't need to spin the crane so that the Tie would sort of be picked up sideways in the SHB and be able to go to the service station and then the launch bay. That might be too much though and really taxiing thought those corridors back to the launch bays is good training.

By the way, perhaps a smaller and easier request, please would you consider numbering the launch bays so the number can be seen from outside the ship and from within? Maybe no need mind, as we can always add numbers our self, but I did think that it would be cool to have to manually open each bay, rather than them all open on one button.

The other thing I wanted to bring up is the internal CCTV stations, one in the SHB security room that can lock the doors, and the other room that opens the Launch bays - years ago, the CCTV screens looked into the MHB and I think the SHB but at a wide angle so you could see the entire floor of each. Now it seems you cannot really see much at all - is this deliberate for FPS reasons or is it something you would consider changing so that these CCTV feeds can be usable again?

Yes those prefabs are a great idea. While on the subject of some of the ground areas you have, I know the cloud cover is quite low, Pilots often don't have much to do when on ship though, I wonder if you have thought about somehow raising the cloud cover so that Ties could do attack runs on some of the surfaces? I know that may present more issues and more room though. I would be inclined to say though, that as cool as the internal space station and Death star parts of the map are, that space would probably be more used if the planet surfaces were expanded. We would always use the planet surfaces, but rarely if ever the station and death star. Food for thought.

And lastly, have you seen the Star Wars universe mod that makes your ISD moveable and can adjust its speed etc? It is quite impressive. I wondered if you ever had a plan to implement something like that and your general thoughts on the mod?

Thanks very much.
Pitchkins