So this touches on something that gets asked a lot in terms of multi-crew mechanics. Pilots are obviously taken care of, same with gunners, both are quite interesting jobs. Everyone else, the concern is that they're basically going to be playing a bunch of whack-a-mole minigames and then the rest of the time just sitting around doing not a lot. How do you keep things interesting?asked by Adrian Ip
TL;DRErin Roberts says non-pilot crew roles, such as the engineer managing power and repairs on a large ship, will have plenty of engaging things to do, while some players may simply choose to be marines.
So let's say you're on an Idris, being the engineer I think is probably the most interesting job and it's their job to balance the entire ship and keep everything running. It's like Scotty in Star Trek. When the ship is taking damage and we have the whole power node system (W: I saw this earlier on the tour, very cool), power or systems go down and people have to run around the ship and go to locations to reroute power etc. Sure there may be some guys who are marines and waiting to be boarded but the number of different things there are to control. I suspect there are going to be some people that when we first release the Idris are going to be spending weeks running training scenarios about what happens if this happens and should we put more power to the main railgun but then maybe that takes the shields down for 30 seconds, ok so what can we do about that etc.
Some people will of course say "screw this, just give me a gun and I'll be a marine" but there are going to be a lot of interesting things to do to keep players involved.