I heard"repair crews" - people... please don't try to bring in random Star Trek fantasies into the game. It does not fit. It is counterproductive. The restoration of a damaged ships needs to happen automatically. There is no human on the world willing to work hard to repair a virtual ship (which by the way could simply be loaded again via admin mode or created by a blueprint). It may be fun to destroy blocks from enemies, but it is not fun to repair. It is fun to design ships however (maybe most of all fun), and anything improving that is worth improving.
lol, i'm hoping that when they say "repair crew" they are talking about NPC's that run around fixing the ship hopefully... a "crew'...
it'd be nice to hire "turret" gunners that "anticipate" a ships movement, rather then trying to fire AT it (BOBBY AI)
could have other benefits, like slow structure repairs, resistance to boarding parties...
anyway. I hope that is what they mean.
but why limit "build mode" as it is? a shipyard could allow rapid construction, and modification of your ship... E.G replacing a whole weapons computer and it's weapons with a different Type... like swapping missiles for ANTIMATTER cannons...
upgrading the hull material to a better type...
things that take HOURS, or days to do. just take the "symmetry" mode out, halve the block count you can set by holding CTRL...
and people have ALL the encouragement needed to visit a shipyard over an "in field repair"