Why can't we turn the lights on or off or change the red alert state on our ships?

It's something scheduled, but in the grand scheme of things, compared to some of the other tasks like docking, it's quite low down the list. A lot of the systems are in place, because they obviously work automatically. It's just exposing that to the user and then making it behave with the automated systems. So it's something that's planned, it's just not in the immediate future.