Hmm, the shadows are cool but I think they make the pods look flat. Maybe if they were made to be embedded into the floor with a kind of glass floor on top of em or somethin like?
(I failed at making the glass part but I figure you get what I mean)
Only other idea I have is to some how remove the idling and actually position the crew inside the pods. (By making the pods into a high_doodad instead of a floor sprite so their a layer above the crew) But I'm not sure if the crew would even return to their rooms with out the idle function as I haven't messed with that yet myself.
Yup this is definitely the hardest part to improve.