Mapping concept: Legos

It sort of makes sense. The whole principle behind static meshes was, in fact, to do your complex shapes in modelling programs, then use the editor to "assemble your Legos", a metaphor I use often. I don't know how it would work for whole rooms, though, as it seriously limits your options for building levels with proper game flow.

If you ask me, you're rambling. Levels are more than just the collection of different parts.
You have to watch your distances to each build part, making sure that these connect great, have proper scaling in respect to each other (eg. if you want a room on top of a big room, you'll need a looong coridor or elevator), provide for a decent flow, and, most importantly, have a theme that fits in with the rest of the map.
I think that if you start building some 'lego rooms' to be used by others, other mappers won't just 'take and use', but rather start working on them: rescaling, re-aligning, removing or adding static meshes, and so on. In the end, the benefit will be close to none...

Note: keep in mind that I'm just a novice mapper. I might be wrong about this

Hmm, i thought the idea was going to be "Maps that are just a giant empty cube with the level built out of lego staticmeshes"

It would definetly give mappers a good reference point by building the level out of REAL lego first

great avvy Icedude. Caboose rocks.

You can already do pretty much exactly what you suggested using prefabs, and you can store a bunch of prefabs in a package so in theory you could make a large library of them to make entire level out of. Prefabs can include brushes and stuff too. The biggest problem I would see with that though is that if you build a bunch of levels with the same "building blocks" you're likely to end up with a bunch of levels that "feel" the same and have the same atmosphere, which could get boring.

Having said that, you might be able to (though not with prefabs, unfortunately) make a sort of "random level generator" that would pick random combinations of rooms and passages and stuff. A random level generated in that fashion might not be that great, but it might make a good starting point for a mapper without a clear concept for a level.

I don't think this kind of thing is what we need. This really wouldn't help anyone become good at mapping, and we'd have a deluge of the same crappy maps a million times over by those who can't map but would feel the urge to release something. Not to mention, we already have enough novice-to-intermediate mappers who don't ever leave the ShipTech, Humanoid, and Abaddon packages, and many, many maps that look almost the same theme-wise. I can only imagine playing the 10th map built from these pre-made rooms... "Oh, look! That exact same lava room I saw in maps 1, 3, 4, 6, 7, and 9! Awesome!!"

While it'd be neat if it worked, if anyone's used the editor that comes with Timesplitters 2 they'll instantly understand why this sort of thing doesn't exactly make for great gameplay.