I would accept other rooms if they had NO effect whatever on gameplay. Excessive polygons, dynamic shadows, gratituitous lighting effects, too many objects, who knows how many dragons are out there to ruin our ability to hide, hunt and kill?
SH4 is a balancing act that already loads up the graphics capability more than shootem-ups like Half Life: Source (where I get 63 frames per second with all settings wide open), Unreal Tournament III (about 90 fps) and other so-called demanding games. I get about 25 fps in SH4 and don't have room for eyecandy that does not contribute to good gameplay.
I'll bet the whole reason the SH4 interior is less detailed than the SH3 interior has to do with the necessary compromise between graphics quality and gameplay quality. Environmental mods have taken us very close to the edge before and had to be ratcheted back.
Producing detailed engine and torpedo rooms and then integrating them into the game will be a very long and difficult process. How will a prospective modder feel if he invests six months into a project that ends up not being able to be used because it chokes our computers, rendering SH4 into a useless static display?
