It'd be really cool to be a passenger into another player's ship. You wouldn't be able to do much more than chat and observe, but it might be a really cool way to learn combat by watching how it's done by more experienced players.

It could also be another avenue of mentoring. By being inside the student's ship, we could comment on his progress and suggest other ways to acheive things.

In the same line of though, having ship with "co-pilot" position would allow one to fly while the other sets jump point and effectivelly be the ship's gunner.

Imagine large transport ships. Humongous cargo but slow. Well armored but not agile. Not only could you have an outside excort, but you could have a defense gunner within the ship.

I like the idea.

Especially with the defense gunner how you called it.

Tho, this has already been suggested =)

i think this would be most usefull in combination with larger ships. but it could be a cool option for smaller ships.

In modern flight there is whats known as the PIC, or Pilot In Command. It would be a good feature for multiplayer ships to have a PIC who pilots the ship. This PIC could also have a hot key to turn over his position to someone else. Example : Pilot wants to be gunner for a while, or wants to log out, so hits "L" to give PIC status to player X. Player X is now the PIC and the pilot of the ship. This would work great for multiplayer ships that have only a few people (Like celebrims strike ship and patrol ship idea's). For larger capacity ships, a different command system would probably be needed.