You would be able to plot a course (Basically just an array of sectors) and the ship would auto-fly through those coordinates until it gets to the last one. It would, however, make no attempt to avoid or eliminate hazards such as stars or pirate/enemy bases, so you would have to plot a detour around sectors containing them unless you had the hull/firepower (respectively) to sustain a flight through their sectors/nearby sectors. A ship would only continue to fly via autopilot if at least one player was on board (via gravity or a [core, computer, whatever else you might be able to ride in in the future, such as a chair]), but this would be Admin-overridable for RP or whatever... An admin could send an AI dreadnaught to any given coordinates to simulate an alien attack or the arrival of allied reinforcements. It's possible that this framework COULD be used for drones as well, but it could easily become vastly overpowered if a powerful faction happened to know where someone's outpost is and chose to take it out with a massive AI ship's turrets, so playerless autopilot would need some kind of balance.
