First qualifier, I do not yet jknow enough about civ world to have relevant comments about what is or is not important skill learned from box time.
OK now.... I would think that the one thing box time gave me was much more exposure to the intergrated operations that go on during ops most especially casualty ops. Not saying space watch stander did not know what was going on plant wide, more like when you are MMUL you focus on that during casualty with some concern for what LL is doing, but AMR??? you just leave them to thier tasks while you do yours. In the box yiou have a dozen things happening at once and you are supposed to track them (guide as case may be) all. Pure osmotic pressure means that at some point you begin to feel/learn the intergration of plant and systems with more of an automatic sense. Becomes the old trained that way so I react that way thing. IMHO an experienced box watchstander, not just qualified but one who has sat a couple of ORSE cycles with all the prep drills ect.., can sit at an oral board a do a better job of discusing plant response and integratino type questions than your typical space watchstander. Of course there are exceptions to this as some guys just get it and do not need box time to get feel of plant at large. Yiou might ask what about ERS and EWS?? well I thnk of them as extensions of the box and it is at that point where space guys begin to become more aware(I do not think aware is right word here but not sure what is) of the plant as a whole with primary/secondary and all other concerns they face in spaces.
Like I said, what do I know, just trying to put a bx guy perspective on it. I know standing AMR2UL did not give me as much understanding of ER watches as I got once I went on the board as RO would think the oppsite was true as well.
Rob