I am designing a mission where upon entering a system you load on to your ship's bridge, have some dialogue with an enemy ship, and then load to your space map and fight them. However, when you go from the bridge map to the space map, it shows your characters beaming out. Do you think this ruins the feeling of whats going on?

If it matters to you, i think it does. Everytime i beam into my own bridge/lounge or out of it, i wonder how difficult it could have been to just let the screen fade or something.

That's why when I leave my bridge I head over to my chair and click "Return to tactical view" instead because it doesn't do the beam out animation

The beam effect is annoying when creating missions in which the story includes a map transition that is not supposed to be a "beaming".

For example, in the mission I'm currently creating, the player's Away Team searches one floor of a building, then takes a turbolift to another floor. The second floor is a different map - i.e. interact with a "Cardassian lift" objects triggers a map transition to a second custom map. But when the player starts the next floor they appear to beam in, because it's a map transition.

So it would be handy to be able to turn the beam effect off sometimes.

there should be an option in the objective window during a map transition

Transition: Beam in/out, or Instant

I agree completely. I've been saying for a while that in order to transition from the bridge to space, you should have to walk close to the Captain's chair. Then when you click the button to leave the ship's interior, your character should sit in the Captain's chair. This would make a lot more sense than beaming off your bridge.

It breaks my immersion to play on maps that are supposed to represent my bridge when they are quite obviously not,unless somehow the designer just happened to pick the same bridge I use on a particular ship that I'm playing the mission on. Chances of authors getting it right every time is like trying to hit a bullet with a smaller bullet whilst wearing a blindfold, riding a horse.

My suggestion is that until there's a way to tie in the player's actual maps, to 'write around' having to actually show player-customized areas. Or do it like the revamped SS Azura mission, where you construct an area of your ship that is either normally unseen or use a standardized room like the transporter room (not sure if they've added transporter room assets to Foundry yet, it's been so long). Also, that may not work when the TOS and/or other player ship interiors are released. Writing around displaying your own ship interior sounds like the safer option.

I also find this immersion-breaking and super annoying.

I'm a big fan of the idea of putting animation tabs in the map transition part:

Leave from Andoria. How do you want to leave? (warp out)
Spawn where? How do you want to spawn? (warp in)

We brought this up in the conference calls. However, I'm not sure if it's a high priority for the devs. It could be something that is hard-wired into the game.

Absolutely. In order to bring diverse and original stories to STO, we need a diverse set of tools. It is also difficult to read our reviews when they criticize technical issues beyond the author's control. I can see players being annoyed by constant beaming. :p

I would suggest build your mission AROUND the limitations... I am for the idea, but, see beginning of post.