I pretty much always sort by faction and have to reset it whenever I restart the game.
I think it'd be doable as a plugin but that'd probably get really ugly.

I fully support this suggestion.

I support this suggestion and raise it a notch: nearby ship list should be toggleable between "Show All"/"Show *NPC Only"/"Show PC Only."

Nothing more annoying than irrelevant data cluttering up one's Nearby Ships display.

Another thing would be getting the list to sort in both alphabetical and reverse alphabetical.

Players use all sorts of ships, but their names are the only ones that don't start with a *. Unfortunately, the alphabetical sorting by name in VO puts names with * at the start of the list -- in Border Skirmish/Battle, this is extremely annoying because it means you have to scroll down all the way to find a player, every time... and then you also have to deal with the sector list updating who's around, which can knock your selection out of the range of your mouseclick at just the wrong time!

Agreed with everyone above.

Done, and pushed. Just waiting on the dev's approval and push into production.