There is good design and seemingly good ideas. Reason why Star Citizen took off is because they sold us those ideas, which people think can translate into good design. You know that thing chadz said about balance between realism and fun?
Multicrew ships are neat idea that sounds awesome in our minds, because that is how thing would work in real life. However, in video game that usually blows or makes a little sense. Like playing FIFA with 11 players each controlling one player. Is it fun? Can be. Is it better thing to do than playing alone vs another player where both of you control whole team? I don't think so.
In game it will always be better controlling huge ships alone, with full NPC crew because AI crewman will most likely be less taxing on performance thus allowing player organization to cram more ships into one instance. As it stands currently, having bunch of fighters is much more effective than having fewer big ships. They have to make really lousy AI in order to player controlled turret, shields and other systems be more efficient than those NPC controlled. Because most players are damn stupid and aren't willing to sit in a turret or at engineers desk for prolonged periods of time while someone else is playing "hero" and taking the accolades. Bottom line, multicrew idea will blow in practice and most players aside from hardcore RPers will abandon it. Which is good, because Star Citizen needs great AI. People who are part of SC community seem to have very few friends and because of their cultist nature they tend to alienate existing ones.
After you give it a slight thought you can figure out that many ideas they pursue in Star Citizen are downright stupid and won't be fun in the long run.
