The answer seems to be somewhere in between. There are enough lingering hooks in behavior and presentation that I tend to suspect crew and equipment were intended to be as interactive as in SH3. However, given that SH4 got pushed out the door prematurely, a logical conclusion is that they had to focus on more critical elements of the sim first and didn't get around to that part. It's not essential to the gameplay if there are hotkeys and GUI buttons that do the same things. It does hurt immersion, though, and hopefully modders can figure out how to get it working at some point.
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