Actually, it is not very difficult to create single-seater missile fighters and bombers, as missile box launchers and sufficiently small MFCs can have zero crew requirements. The trick is that engines always require crew, however an engine with a product of size times EP boost modifier less than 1.5 will require only a single crew member. Using this, it is not difficult to design a serviceable missile bomber in the 100-ton range which requires only a single pilot, and with a second engine you can design in the 150-200 ton range a double-seater bomber.
For beam weapons this ends up not being feasible due to crew requirements for beam weapons plus the need for effective BFCs, and you are better off going up to the 500-ton limit and treating these fighters as gunships.
It is worth noting that typical modern fighter aircraft are in the range of 20 tons, not 500, so the crew requirements for "fighters" in Aurora are reasonable given this. On the flip side, it is also worth noting that while modern combat fighters are always single or dual seat craft, this has not always been the case historically as, e.g., WWII bombers could have crews of 5 to 10 depending on the plane and mission role.
Personally I prefer the current system as it is quite flexible IMO. In gameplay terms, there is an important resource consideration which is the number of trained crew available to man all of your ships... adding ways to artificially deflate this requirement with effectively no downside in case of fighters and other small/short-range craft minimizes the importance of this resource. So for gameplay I think it works best as it is, and for RP we can use our imaginations as always.
