Note on crew: While in fiction, the ships can spend considerable periods of time in space, most players (outside of W-space) dock up regularly. So running with a minimal (or in the case of frigates, no) crew isn't a huge jump in logic. There may be situations, though, where you'd want crew in a frigate (maximum performance or ability to have "biorobots" to do repairs that can't be done by applying nanite paste to the damaged area).