Can you jump into the docking corridor area, in the little walkways that you've got?
TL;DRThe ship has a docking collar and walkable exterior walkways, enclosed behind grated mesh so players are exposed to the elements but shielded from debris and stray shots, needed for repairs and as alternate routes.
So it does have a docking collar. And then also, it's kind of hard to see, but we added some exterior walkways and channels that you could walk through.
Oh my god, the sense of scale. So when Lee was trying to sort the navigation for the ship, we didn't want it to be too simplified. We want people to be able to go onto the actual exterior, but at the same time, we didn't want loads of issues with the grids and the physics issues that we sometimes encounter. So we ended up trenching all of the exterior walkways, basically behind mesh. But it's grated mesh, so you'll still be exposed to the elements, but you don't have to worry about debris or stray shots hitting you. But it meant that we had, to be blunt, an entire level's worth of navigation for the designer who primarily did a lot of the layout for the floor, Lee.
So you're going to be walking around the exterior of this?
Well, you've got to, because just to maintain some of it, you're going to have to go out and do a lot of the repairs. And there's alternate routes for when the power goes down on the inside, like the staircase on the conning tower. And obviously, it's a full staircase, so you get some sort of idea of just the scale of it. The first time I saw that, I immediately thought of the Midgar tower in Final Fantasy 7, when you have the choice to either run up the giant staircase or go up the lift.