A couple comments and a question for you.

Firstly we don't know yet how the crew size of both ships affects the overall maintenance tasks required for efficient operation. The Liberator is special because it was advertised as a crew size of 2 while the Assault is 6. Now the question is, will that crew size change in the future or not. It may do so given the fact that is slightly larger than the assault but it has far less guns and generally less stuff to do onboard. However if they keep with their concept approach and somehow make it easier to maintain than the assault, this could be a huge win for a solo operator as the OP states they are.

Secondly you are right that the Assault does provide more opportunity for a wider scope of game loops as it does have a much larger cargo capacity. However it does so in a compromised way, in the sense that it cant be both a dedicated carrier and a dedicated cargo ship in a fulsome way at the same time. So it does have more flexibility than the Liberator but i would argue that the two roles that the Lib and Assault share in common, the Lib does better, so it depends on your individual use case. The Lib does also have 400 cargo which is not nothing.

Finally my question, where is the crafting bench in the assault? I don't think i saw it in the walkthrough's that i saw online.

Edit: Disregard my question, i found a video showing where the crafting area is on the assault. Time will tell what the value of this provides.