I feel like destroyers are large enough that taking your eyes off the "road" for a moment to adjust controls is perfectly fine. Ships like that have radar systems to detect other boats. These things could probably pilot themselves with enough sensors. They move slow enough in crowded waterways and have actual radar (versus lidar or cameras) so seeing the speed and direction of other things around them is already built-in. Relying on a bunch of tired people to work together to steer a ship seems like a worse idea than having just one well-rested captain that can sit back and observe an auto-pilot.
Having a thoughtful default UI along with the ability to display any control or status on the screen would seem like a better idea for central control station. A captain could pull up their own configuration for the control panel. During an emergency, they could fallback to a default view that could be referenced by operating procedure documents. Give the ability to delegate controls to other stations but do not allow multiple stations to control the same input, that seems like an idiotic idea.
Like for smartwatches, I hate using touch controls to control it, I really prefer physical buttons since they provide multiple benefits
- keep the display smudge-free
- works with gloves (useful during winter)
- allow actions from touch-memory (ie: skip song without looking at it)