1.) If the payouts, benefits, and advantages of having a large ship fully crewed by humans exponentially outweighs using a solo ship, then finding people that want to crew won’t be hard. 2.) If players can earn the same or close to the same large ship benefits or advantages using minimal human crew and blades/AI instead then this will be the dominant gameplay. The crew positions (mainly turrets) and tasks that can be bladed or AI operated will most certainly never be crewed by humans. Players will gravitate towards gaining as many advantages as they can using large ship piloted by one person. Large ships with benefits that can be solo’ed effectively with AI assistance will be the most popular ships in the game. More driven players may multibox - especially for large industry ships. The drivers are greed and convenience. People naturally want as many advantages as they can get without having to share profits or manage other humans. 3.) If the most effective gameplay is solo ships or AI assisted solo ships, large ships will mostly stay dry docked outside of large org operations or wars where the presence of a capital sized ship offers a large tactical advantage. If large ships are easily taken out by groups of single seaters, they will never be flown. If single seat ships are more effective but are logistically challenged (e.g. short jump range, fuel/resource constraints) then carrier capitals to move and field meta single seaters will find value. 4.) If 2 is true and large ships that can be solo’d with AI or blade support are common with high profits, finding crew will be difficult because no one will want to crew if they can earn more and manage less with their own independent vessel. 5.) If a ship can perform is primary role well with one pilot and no crew support it can effectively be a single seater. An example is the retaliator, where the turrets offer very little benefit in a combat situation and the ship can still deliver its payload with one pilot. In a scenario where escort fighters are available, those turrets will never be manned. An example is Xenothreat‘s final phase where the retaliator was the most effective and lucrative ship to fly but no retaliator had more than a single pilot or turrets manned. 6.) The two things players value most is time and profit. The gameplay with the most profit for the least time will be what players do. If multicrew wastes a large amount of time for less profit than what someone can do solo, then multi-crew will be rare. The exception is PvP where you replace profit with effectiveness. NOTABLE EXAMPLES: PVP: Assume a hammerhead is effective against small fighters but loses to 2 ares ions. The hammerhead would never be flown in a player combat situation because the 2 ion meta to counter it will always be present. 2 player fighters require less logistics to deal with and are worth a 7 person ship. It would never be worth fielding a hammerhead because the counter is to easy to deploy, too effective, and puts the gameplay of 7 people at risk. 7 people takes longer to deploy, longer to organize, and will never be worth it if they can all be killed by two guys. This issue is seen today (understanding that balance is non-existing and the game is nowhere need intended state, but the points still stand) where the hammerhead is one of the least flown ships despite it being in the game for a long time. It can easily be killed by a single retaliator or even a skilled fighter with a proper loadout that can deplete large shields. It is almost never fully crewed outside of org ops. PVE: Assume there are PvE missions for the hammerhead that involve the destruction of endless fighter waves with extremely high rewards. The hammerhead captains will use the minimal viable crew needed to complete the mission to maximize rewards. This means if the PvE hammerhead mission can be completed with just a captain and full blades/AIs, this is what players will run.