On smaller ships the Engineering section is very much in your face
with all the guts exposed with the controls adjacent.

In larger craft with more space at disposal the guts could be well
hidden behind panels with a profusion of conduits between modular
components. The controls are now in their own compartment. You could
make it a booth with a large window overlooking the raw Engineering
Section for window dressing if you don't want visitors crawling
through the tubes.

On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 6:28 AM, Freelance Traveller
<editor@freelancetraveller.com> wrote:
> (Side note: I suspect that something got jammed up at the Freelance
> Traveller mail server; the 'missing' messages came back to me in one
> swell foop. Only it wasn't so swell that they didn't come in "on time".
> Seems to be OK now, though.)
>
> In "classical" Traveller (i.e., the Third Imperium and 'compatible'
> settings), ships are allocated engineering space, and on deck plans the
> various 'drives' are roughed in as very irregular shapes. However, with
> the sort of miniaturization of electronic components that we can do even
> today, about the only thing that causes irregular shape is _mechanical_
> connection or interfacing. If controls are electronic, they can be
> managed by a touch-screen arrangement, much like on /Star Trek: The Next
> Generation/ or /Deep Space Nine/ or /Voyager/.
>
> So, if I walk in to Engineering on e.g., an Empress Marava or a Beowulf,
> what am I going to see? Will I see grey, blue, white, purple, etc.,
> boxes with consoles attached? Or will I see something that looks like
> steampunk updated to the 1970s? Or will I see something like Engineering
> on one or another of the Star Trek franchises?
>
> (Ulterior motive: At some point, I want to build a Traveller starship
> interior using The Sims 2, and then do a "photo tour" for Freelance
> Traveller. I can fake up a bridge easily enough (there are Star Trek
> consoles of all sorts downloadable as add-ons), and living areas are
> essentially trivial, but Engineering is a potential problem.)
>
> --
> Jeff Zeitlin, Editor
> Freelance Traveller
>     The Electronic Fan-Supported
>     Traveller® Fanzine and Resource
>
> editor@freelancetraveller.com
> http://www.freelancetraveller.com
> http://freelancetraveller.downport.com/
>
>
>
> ®Traveller is a registered trademark of
> Far Future Enterprises, 1977-2014. Use of
> the trademark in this notice and in the
> referenced materials is not intended to
> infringe or devalue the trademark.
>
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>
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--
Joseph