StarMade Dock

Hey man, just looked at your station again. The big text like "techinc and engineering section" at the station's sides are looking allright. If you want to you should try to make it reconisable by objects instead of text. Even though I can imagine that this would not really be possible...Maybe a telescope on the research section, and steam vents and cranes on the technical section...Anyway keep it up.

Thanks for the suggestion, JinM. - Do you mean that the floating plexdoor and forcefield signs could be replaced with icons that relate to the labeled areas, which would be built at the same places and of these same deactivate-able materials as the current text signs? - Or you mean I should use actual matching physical detailing on top of the different sections of the station, to indicate their purpose?

The original plan behind building those signs there, was to make the four different sections clearly identifiable from the outside, while keeping their mirrored (and thus indistinguishable) exterior detailing the same, to spare the effort needed to make them all unique. And the signs were made out of vanish-able materials, so that larger ships could deactivate them to fit well when docking.

Yes we talk about the same signs. And you allready said it: more effort needed to make them unique. In the end its a personal prefference choice, because making each quarter individual is too much effort. A designer that works on such stuff would then actively say "hey this would have taken too long and I have 50 more stations to build". Just saying that for a perfect design this texts are an obvious effort choice.

And dont get me wrong for a freetime project this is perfectly fine. Just wanted to let you know of the principle: "if you need a sign to identify the room, the room is badly designed (e.g. undistinguishable captain's office and first-mate office, so the viewer needs to read the sign in any case or he cant tell them apart).

So for a perfect design I would make one detail on each quarter, so the viewer can tell each quarter apart just by looking at them. The details dont need to clearly tell the viewer what each quarter is about. You still need the signs to finally identify the purpose, but you can tell apart the "captains from the first mate's" room, or in your case the engineering from the research section.

So letting the signs stay is perfectly fine, just adding one more detail on each section.

Okay one last thought: If you take the signs away, and the viewer knows the names of all sections, how can he make them out just by looking at the station? Exactly, if you take the signs away the details are not enough to tell apart wether or not I am looking at the habitation or the or the storage and high risk facility, even if someone told me the names of each section but didnt tell me which is which.