Most needed: remove shuttle bays!

The game needs an option to toggle between fast boarding the ship or the current 'realistic' style, if they did this then I would like to be able to pilot the ship. Off the planet.

It's not possible the way they have it designed. As it stands, your ship is a zone. Every zone requires you to load the entire zone and unload the previous zone. So, unless they completely redesign ships and how they work from the ground up, you'll always get the loading screen when both entering and leaving your ship.

And in all honesty, it makes sense for the sake of overall loading time when doing space missions. Imagine if you were on Aldaraan, one of the largest of all the planets and the longest loading times and the ship was the same zone as the planet. Now, you decide to run a space combat mission which loads the space combat zone. When you're done, you need to fully reload the largest planet in the game. If you did this for 3-5 space missions in a row, it probably adds 10+ minutes of loading time to the game.

The only real problem with ships and loading I can see that is fixable is the excessive areas of no content and no point.

I also think it sucks I have to get on a plane for 5 hours every time I have to fly to washington d.c., plus the drive to and from the airport.

Can't we just make this **** instant people? sigh!!!

I agree

5s loading screen for Alderaan?

Give me your computer...

NOW! *waves lightsaber in front of your face*

Hoth is hell. Run to the elevator, run to your ship, land in an orbital station, land on the planet, wait for the elevator, go to the bunker thing, wait for the elevator, and then you are at the main quest.

I agree. Get rid of all the loading crap.

Its not immersion in an MMO when you are the only friggin person there. This game plays far to mush like a platform game for me right now.

Agree with OP... so many loading screens... but more importantly, SO MANY ELEVATORS! Seriously, what is with this game and it's love for elevators?

Would have loved to just land on the planet of my choice. But I guess since the Orbital Stations / Class Hangars are already designed they're here to stay.

I like it, as others have said it adds immersion.

Also, it adds "interesting decisions". Like, "Is it really worth it to go level artifice in between planets, or should I just wait until after the next one?" Or perhaps, "Should I go post this awesome prototype armor I found on the GTN now, or wait?" These may not be earth-shattering decisions, but no decision is interesting if there's no trade-off.

That being said, I would like to see a "Return to Ship" button like they had in KotOR, with a reasonably long CD of course.

I can't believe you people seriously defend this. It's bad design.
EQ2 failed with this concept, so they changed it, and it was for the better.

Let's make comparisons:

WoW
Zone onto other continents.
Zone into instances (dungeons/raids).
Zone into battlegrounds.
Everywhere else is OPEN WORLD.


Swtor
Zone into Orbital Station.
Zone into Imperial Fleet.
Zone into Ship.
Click Map on Ship, 3 times.
Zone out of Ship.
Zone out of Terminal.
Zone into Planet.
Zone into Group Phases. (seamless btw)
Zone into Flash Points.
Zone into Warzones.

zone here, click there, clicking immersion everywhere! brilliant design philosophy.
This is so immersive bioware! We just have to click over 9000 times a day to travel.