Alright I am definitely tying my hands a bit too much now. The collection of non-negotiable requirements I placed on this build forced it into a fairly specific shape & layout that unfortunately could not look good. Looking at it with the almighty hindsight I actually feel most of it was done right at a high level, with fine details always being debatable. The problem was all in the constraints. Without those constraints, though, I'd have a ship in official LEGO style, with the deck level area of the superstructure being 1/2 the height of a minifig, and absolutely no consideration for how figures could potentially get up to the bridge. I have, in fact, begun to find some of the limits of what can be accomplished with LEGO, with consideration for minifigs, at a reasonable size. Making everything much bigger would solve all of these issue, but also completely break New...
