I'm really glad you checked out the game, and thanks for the feedback!
Concerning your question on crew, everything a cohort needs in terms of equipment, etc. is considered to be a part of the cohort, so building/repairing/fueling fighters is part of the activation cost. I'll make this clearer in the next edit.
Thanks for pointing out the errors with utilities and cohorts, too. Each Fleet should indeed start with two utilities marked, and doesn't mark more during creation. As you might be able to tell from the fact that the text disagrees with itself, I was going back and forth on this and decided that choosing utilities slowed down Fleet creation too much. As for cohort activation, the Fleet can activate 2 cohorts at the beginning of a journey for free, not just one.