Ships have crews.
https://forums.eveonline.com/default.aspx?g=posts&m=2411396#post2411396
I prefer using crews. But CCP says that if someone wants to RP that their frigate is just the capsuleer then there is nothing wrong with them doing that.
Anything larger than a frigate though I'd have serious doubts on.
Totally. Elmund still has to bring crew members aboard a Talwar despite having automated most of its functions. With a Frigate, everything's pretty nicely packed and things are pretty simple. At the very most you need a Chewbacca or a R2-D2 sit in one spot to fix crap.
A destroyer is a different story since it is a more complicated piece of machinery. Weapons still have auto-loaders, there are still conveyor belts and robotic arms with RFID scanners and everything but now there's more space to cover and there's more moving parts. Just like all evil schemes and plots, the more complicated something is the more ways something is going to go wrong, especially in the middle of the shooting.
As per usual, Elmund isn't particularly pleased with that and is still working on a solution. For the time being he just has a crew safety policy and some changes in architecture and inclusion of manual-control drones with limited AI as all-purpose tools so as to maximise crew efficiency. If he can bring less crew and they can do their work in relative safety of reinforced bulkheads with automated beacons and life support, then he will do it, doesn't matter how much more he has to pay. He also frowns whenever someone tries to play the hero in his sights (being a former marine trainee means he had seen enough marines die for heroically stupid reasons to get mighty sick of it).
Also note that Elmund only does not bring crew aboard frigates that he doesn't expect to stay in space for more than two hours at a time. If he is going to be undocked for several days (expeditions and etc) he is going to bring crew. This is because of wear and tear. One or two hours won't cause significant wear and tear to make the ship inoperable. Several days and all that friction damage accumulates and all the lubricant dries up and things get snagged. He could use drones but drones are hardly dexterous enough to uncouple wires properly.
Also also wormholes. Someone has to apply RFID tags on all the Sleeper loot and machines can't do it because there's no RFID tags for them to identify squat. He will bring a bored grandmother (or several bored grandmothers) with him to wormholes to do the RFID tagging. He also bring bored grandmothers with him for salvage operations (because salvages do not tag themselves).