What are some of the gameplay elements that Item System 2.0 gives us for multi-crew? What's it going to be like to manage the shields on a multi-crew ship, and to manage engines and power and cooling?
TL;DRThrottleable shield power and other fiddly adjustments need close MFD monitoring, so a dedicated crew member can handle them while the pilot flies, which is where multi-crew gains value.
Well, in the past, I think the most control we had for things like shields was turning them off and on. Not super fun. So because we'll be able to throttle how much the shield generators are requesting as far as power, so that you can reserve power for the rest of the systems on the ship, you need to monitor that MFD pretty closely. That's rather difficult to do when you're also trying to fly the ship and not die. And so if we can dedicate a copilot or an engineer or whoever is sitting in another seat to be the shield guy, he or she can monitor the MFD for shields and then decide, okay, here's where we need to divert power to shields or divert power away from shields, or do things like a particular face prioritization, and do all those rather fiddly adjustments to the shields so that it'll ensure that your survivability in the battle is much greater. And because it's something that does require more concentration than the pilot is perhaps allowed during a firefight, that's where the advantages of multi-crew, I think, will be seen.