Crew is in an awkward place where it's just not that interesting right now, but also most of the potential additions are going to step on the toes of existing mechanics. As others have mentioned, CR basically already covers morale and crew competency in an abstracted way. Breaking those out into additional meters doesn't seem like it would add too much to the actual experience of Space Admiral Simulator.
There's basically three real "crew moments": you salvage a larger ship than your fleet currently has, you lose a lot of ships/fighters in a battle or series of battles, or you need to found a colony. The latter only happens at a point where there's no economic challenge, so basically the only thing crew does currently is force you to mothball ships or have low CR on rare occasions while you return to quickly load up on crew. . And neither of the remainder add any gameplay, really; if you're losing that many ships or need to put a large ship into service, supplies are more frequently your limiting factor and a much more impactful limiter at that.
I don't think that crew experience actually added much to the game, though, so I don't think that should make a return. Splitting off pilots from crew wouldn't add much of anything, either, besides some extra bookkeeping. Getting rid of crew altogether feels like an unwelcome abstraction. So I guess, unless Alex has some plans that will surprise us (entirely possible), we're stuck with crew As It Is. Small balance shifts like increasing price or changing availability might make it a little more interesting in the early game, alongside the previously-discussed change of Blast Doors and Recovery Shuttles into something that has more of an actual impact to make them separately more appealing.
