Extra screens
Not consoles exactly — the other things you can put on a screen. Some of them are jobs for a spare pair of hands; one of them is the reason bridge nights look good in photographs.
Main screen
The view out of the front of the ship, with no controls attached. Point a spare laptop at it, or a television if you’re all in the same room, and the bridge suddenly has a window. You can swap what it shows — forward, to the sides, behind, or a tactical view — which makes “put the enemy on screen” an actual instruction rather than a line from television.
Playing remotely? It still works: run it in a second window, or let whoever has the biggest monitor share it.
Damage control
The inside of the ship, and the crews who repair it. On a big hull this is a real job: deciding who goes where while things burn. Give it to a sixth player and your engineer will be able to concentrate on power instead of triage.
Power management
Just the reactor and the sliders, without the rest of engineering. Useful when you want two people splitting the engine room, and useful as a first shift for somebody who’s never played before — it’s one clear idea to learn instead of six.
Ship’s database
The reference library on its own screen: ships, factions, places, and the odd thing nobody has explained yet. Science has it built in, but handing it to somebody else turns them into the ship’s historian — and a fair amount of this universe is hidden in those entries for anyone who reads them.
All of these can be opened alongside a console, or on a second machine entirely. If you have more people than seats, this is where the extras go — and none of them are filler.