The second book in the Thrawn trilogy, was it Fleet of Twilight in English, is about a whole abandoned fleet. They had some way to control it by very few people.
I’m actually reading that book right now and the Katana fleet is more or less from the clone wars era, granted that is in the pre-PT clone wars canon so it may not fit perfectly with the new time-line, but it’s very close to Forgotten Noble’s scenario.
Also I’m sure there’s some PT RPG sourcebook somwhere that can offer some info on how many people/droids that’s needed to run a cruiser. Or you can probably find similar, if not the same, info on Wookieepedia.
(The Thrasn book was called Dark Force Rising btw.)
Thanks for the info!