Decks 4-5 of the Wisteria are the engineering bay and related rooms. As mentioned earlier, this ship came out way bigger than it was supposed to… and the engineering bay was always supposed to run almost the entire length of this part of the ship… so this came out a dizzying 80 meters long. Most of the length is this great big room with pistons in a tank and some fuel tanks and things on the side (Above).
The rest is this completely placeholdery entrance area (below).
what does this thing do, anyway?
It’s an engine room. It’s kindofsortof based on the idea of an ion thruster, where you take ionized gas and spit it out the back of your ship: a rocket engine, but with a very thin stream of particles instead of a big blast.
So already I’ve got a visual problem; the radial piston engine (in the blue tank on the right of the image above) isn’t a radial piston engine; it’s supposed to be more of a particle accelerator. But a slight redesign of the piston models could communicate this idea more effectively. And also be more visually interesting.
The tank in which the pistons sit is supposed to be a cooling system. To make that clearer, I could:
- Add ice crystals / condensation to the tank walls.
- Put engineers in special garments to suggest that the room is pretty cold, too.
- Put caution signs near the exposed parts of the beam.
- Add a heat distortion effect near the exposed parts of the beam (I think my game engine already provides a way to do that, but I’ve never tried).
On the sides you’ve got some fuel tanks and structures meant to resemble rotary converters.
Oh hey, that detail was taken from this book New York’s Forgotten Substations. Let’s look at that a bit more.
In this image, there are some nifty columns running the length of the room. That could be a nice detail, the suggestion that, you know, something is holding that ceiling up.
And here we’ve got some consoles lining the walls. I could do some colorful displays pretty quickly to add interest there.
what do people do here?
So I suspect engineers’ jobs might broadly fit into two categories? Maintaining the engine parts and monitoring the engine parts while it’s running.
Maintenance
There could be a workshop. You’d also need dollies or palette jacks or something that can move large objects into the workshop, and some suggestion that wall between the front and back areas has a large garage door or something through which you can wheel those objects.
A broken part in the workshop, currently being worked on, would be great.
There should also be spare parts.
Monitoring
I feel like there could be more monitors pretty much everywhere. More consoles on the floor and on the catwalks, readouts on the tank glass itself, readouts on various tanks and engine parts.
I’d also like there to be some sort of centralized, high-level ship-wide systems monitor, where the player can see their progress repairing parts of the ship.
Much of the work in the main room is already done, though it’s always felt rather empty and consequently unconvincing to me.
is this enough?
If I move the machinery on the edges of the room in just one meter, the space somehow looks much more… like they needed this amount of space for this engine, plus, it lets you walk behind the machinery. So yeah, I think the above edits will be enough.
Entrance Area
About that entrance area: I’m thinking add some walls on either side of the space (sort of dividing it into thirds). The center portion can be big and open, with a big holographic ship status display that the player can look at, to see their progress during the repairing-the-ship part of the game.
Some ideas for the side rooms:
- An office.
- A break room.
- A bathroom.
- Lockers and maybe showers, if the characters in this space are shown to be wearing specialized protective garments or something while in the engine room.
- A workshop with stores of small spare parts, for repairing damaged engine pieces.
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Next up: the flight deck. The engineering bay was the last part of the Wisteria I’ve done substantial work for, so after this things get pretty sketchy.