So this means there will be an absolute requirement to have a lot of friends for piloting the larger ships? No way to hire NPC crew to make sure you can fly it alone or with limited amount of people?asked by Aletheides1

I don't think players should able to fly ships much bigger than a Constellation (say a capital ship) without help.

On the NPC ships these roles will be taken by NPCs, and there is a chance that we allow someone to hire NPC crew (that a friend could drop in and take over if they wanted). It would very similarly to the drop in / drop out gameplay for the single player game.