[Is Anyone Surveying the Planets?]

I still remember how we digitalized an old map in GIS in college: by manually re-drawing all borders and coloring ore deposits on the software. Even if Devs don't provide such an API, we can do it with lots and lots of screenshots anyway.

[Safety When Logged off]

I would like to see 3 mechanics:

1. A record about who damaged your construts, and can somehow track down where he is.

2. Some kind of stationary shield bubble, which will require a proper warship or several dedicated fighters to overcome. Thus, if someone want to lay ruin on other players' constructs, he must play as pirate properly, rather than stick a gun on his rookie ship and trolling around.

3. A "pseudo" safezone layed by guild. Don't prevent attack, but if someone did it, he will be at war with enitre guild and have a bounty on his head. 

[PvP Mechanics and wrong gameplay direction ?]

I don't fully get the discussion. When I read the OP, I thought something like "point your main gun and armored prow at your enemy, don't let enemy ship get your 6 o'clock". If DU would somehow simulate weapon damage and armor resistance like Space Engineer, I would expect that.

[Will we be able to build ships or space stations with abnormal shapes?]

Then how will DU prevent trolls from building awkward shapes?

[Ships and the crew required]

I do hope DU could provide engaging experience for every crew, and left simple and repeative work to automated system and script. Most players aren't trained military personnel waiting for order 24 hours, so crew should be a feature to improve ship's performance, not a requirement to run a ship, or it will result in a bunch of under-crewed ship sitting around.  

 

Personally, I think a ship may have 3 characters that are difficult to be fully automated: navigator, "function control" (fire control on warship, deck control on carrier, etc) and communicator. And if a player is good enough to manage all three characters at the same time, he should be allowed to pilot a highly-automated big ship alone.