I agree it would make for good RP if we could build things like drone fighters... they only way I could realistically build beam fighters in a democratic factions for example. Drone scouts and sentry stations is another good use for this kind of thing. I could easily role-play sentry station with like 20 years of engineering compartments as I need zero deployment time for crew.

You could even make it so that ships that are entirely AI also must use the new automatic targeting mechanic as well, giving the player less control of tactical targeting for such crafts, you also don'r get an crew grade bonuses either so that is another downside, the extra computer parts also should be a bit more expensive but use up less space than the crew spaces it replaces. The amount if AI and service robots required should still be relatively extensive. You could simulate this by having these ships simply break down twice as often... you also replace the bridge with an AI core... if the AI core is ever destroyed (or its backup) the ship is dead in the water.

So... an AI core and an Auxiliary AI core could be available. Then if the ship is flagged as a drone it will automatically have twice the rate of malfunction so you need to stuff it with allot more engineering representing all the robots and automation. No crew grade, 100% automatic fleet training though and you are forced to use automatic targeting, no manual targeting available (except setting up AMM fire rating perhaps).

Automation could be an interesting choice, you could make the ship more vulnerable to microwave weapons while reducing crew requirements but I'd be more interested with making drone fighters. Being able to make fully automated ships would present interesting design choices. They would be expensive, vulnerable to microwaves and have large EM signatures but they are not shackled by deployment time which can just be set to 0 and require no crew facilities. The lack of crew grade bonuses would be another disadvantage. I see them making excellent scout fighters or automated JP defense bases.

I guess I'm not sure why we really need this, in terms of RP? Specifically the "advanced" computing techline. Present day hardware and software is already more or less capable of doing exactly this, with manufacturing plants converting en masse to use cloud database services as the current fad, and I see no reason why we can't RP that this all but pre-existing tech is what our ships have in place as well - surely our TN technological marvels have computers onboard without having to explicitly research "TN Shipboard Computers - 10,000 RP", after all. Even modern navies have a good deal of this kind of thing, although it is limited in application due to political pressure and inertia among other reasons.