I think there is a problem of expectations here, which SCS is in part guilty of creating. SCS sims could fairly be described as "sensor sims." They simulate the function of ship stations--in fact most non-commercial sims made by SCS focus exclusively on individual stations and are used for training purposes.
It appears that many people who have come here from the Silent Hunter community are used to a very different kind of sim, where the focus isn't individual stations, but on the experience of command. These players are looking for a role-playing experience of being the skipper and would rather not concern themselves with playing the roles of the subordinate crew. The problem is, that's not what SCS sims are designed to be.
Autocrew is present for workload management and not much more. It lets you concentrate on some sensors while doing a good-enough job on the others so that you don't get completely overwhelmed. SCS also talks about autocrew as providing scalability, meaning they intended to allow players to cut certain functions out, restricting the scale of the player's experience to certain aspects. This was an irresponsible statement on their part, because they never put in the effort to make autocrew function in this way. Maybe there was a disconnect between the developers and the marketers on that. But the bottom line is that the products of the autocrew were NEVER meant to be a simulation of anything, so critiquing the fidelity of the simulation based on those products is unfair.
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