If it's a "simple fix" (as you say) then the automation and (redundant) backup systems can handle it.
If they can't ... the craft is almost certainly doomed already, regardless of whether or not there's an "audience" there to ride the disaster to conclusion.
Dunno.
I was reading the other day about one of the AmSats launched years ago that had stopped working. The diagnosis from the ground was that the battery which stored power from the solar panels had developed a short.
Several years go by... And it's suddenly working when it's in the sun side of it's orbit. They think the battery decayed to completely open, and now the solar goes straight to the electronics.
It's a "fix", of sorts, but the kind of thing that's an X Boat pilot could do with a pair of wire cutters... And one that the designers of the Sat never considered . Taking the battery completely out of the circuit isn't normally part of the plan
Similar issues with the Voyagers, where they've come up with remote work arounds, but 5 minutes of on site would have been a better solution.
Part of the handicap of discussions like this is we really don't know the details of how stuff works. What's likely to go wrong on an Xboat?
What's fixable that you can't preemptively put redundancies in so that you don't need a pilot? What's not?
What's the daily maintenance issues that make having someone aboard worthwhile?
We've got no hardware specs and we're just guessing. Worse, we're guessing with the knowledge that a Roman ship captain would have of a modern destroyer, or worse.
The Imperium ran X-boats with crew for centuries. Either there's a technical reason, or there's a strong tradition (Vilani?) That they can't psychologically overcome.
I have issues with the "sophont interaction with jump space" thing. I'd feel better with an explanation that didn't include that.
I reconcile decanonization of jump torpedos as "they didn't arrive at the destination often enough to be reliable", probably due to trying to cram everything into a small space with limited redundant systems.
I suspect you could run an X Boat with a TL13+ (by T5 rules) robot running the thing. You're dumping nearly a Mcr there though. T5 has skill 1 being paid about 500cr a month, call it 6kcr a year. That's 166 years before the robot breaks even. Even adding in life support costs, it's like 18 years to break even, and that's ignoring maintenance on the bot. If you go with anything over 4% or so of the price of the bot per year it never beats the sophont. A sophont is cheaper, and easier to find worlds with high enough TL to do maintenance.
But really, that's whistling on the way past the graveyard: the Imperium keeps putting people in them. Everybody else puts people in their couriers. The K'kree go out of their way to find people to do it.
If there was a way to skip the pilot, you'd think someone would have
