And this is what we hope to have the beginnings of in 2.3?
TL;DRThey aim to lay the groundwork for the core systems in 2.3, with more nuanced on-the-fly player configuration layered on later, since they want engineering stations to be meaningful player roles.
Yeah, we're really trying to get a lot of the groundwork in for the core function of a lot of the things we've been talking about. Some of the nuanced ability for players to actively configure these things on the fly will sort of layer on once we've got the core formulas and back end implemented. But it's absolutely something that we're pushing for, because, like Calix was mentioning with multi-crew ships, we don't want the engineering station to just be something where you think, 'I'm going to just assign an NPC crew member to this all the time.' We want it to be something where, no, this is the most badass shield-managing engineer in the galaxy, because he can take a 100,000-health shield system and get 400,000 health out of it in a single fight.
And having internally accessible items is something that we're also trying to achieve. So there's that excitement of: shield generator A is down, engineer, go run down the hall and repair that component, or grab a replacement component from the cargo hold and pop a new one in, because otherwise we're dead meat in the middle of battle.