you know if you set the interior to the small layout in the ship tailor there's a lot less corridor. Early on they said they had to have the huge interiors in order to make room for the cameras, as well as making room for combat in the sets. Some of the newer interiors, like the TOS and the soon to be released Defiant, are much smaller, as they've since improved the tech. My understanding was that Gecko hasn't had enough time to revisit the older interiors.
The game itself is a few gigs, so large patches aren't unusual, especially after major season updates. The ship graphics, as well as damage are about the same as SFC III. As it was explained, they aren't going for the kind of realism you can get in sim games like Bridge Commander.