I just don't know how well that would work out if the player, for example, was a gunner on a ship. Okay...so you sit in your spot or watch the ship in a 3rd person view as it goes from Point A to Point B. Unless the game spawns pirates all of the time to be targets for you, I think it would be so boring I would cry. You would have no control over what you do.
Now, if this was LT 2.0 (or years in the future) where our player can wander through the ship interior as a tiny little speck in the universe, I think it would be awesome. You could have your own quarters on a ship with other NPCs, and then there might be random encounters (maybe in the procedural universe, there are pirates who are looking for a quick buck). Alarms would flash, you could be anywhere on the ship and have to race to your station. You could man a turret to defend the ship and possibly have to repel enemies trying to board the ship. If you fail to defend the ship, you might be captured as a slave for pirates, be ransomed by a 'friend' (or someone who you will owe a lot of money to), or even be...DEAD. Right now, I don't think LT would be able to make being even less than a pilot as fun IMO. There are no ship or station interiors to give you something else to do or look at if you are not piloting the ship as well.
Now, I haven't read the other topic that brought up this poll, so I might have rehashed the same things or completely missed a huge argument that makes all of my arguments null and void. So...my apologies.
Random squirrel
EDIT - Glanced over it quickly.
"I think being crew should be as fun as being the pilot, and if that can't be accomplished, crew should not exist."
^That. Pilot can: Fly around a procedural universe, shoot things, trade, build, etc. A crew member doesn't own his own ship...therefore, technically if he didn't have his own ship he couldn't do anything on his own...which the game basically hinges on the fact that you can go wherever you want, do whatever you want, however you want...without you being hindered by not having your own ship to control.
If you voluntarily want to not fly your own ship...well...fuck...I don't what you would be doing then.
"Everyone needs to have their avatar's edited to have afros." -Charley Deallus