Some people call it a cheat, some don't, but lets be fair. You can go into Build Mode in a ship, then move your viewpoint over to another ship/station/whatever and fly right through it and see everything there is in it.
However, the latest patch added something interesting. The build mode drone with the light. Aka, we now have something in game that represents our viewpoint when in build mode, something others can see.
And if its exists in the engine with a no-clipping status, could we possibly finally be able to turn clipping back on for everything other than what you're currently working on (and probably what you're docked to) in order to keep snoops from taking a tour of all your stuff?
I agree that being able to look inside anybody else's ship/station is not a desirable ability, but coming up with a good solution might be difficult simply because it's a sandbox game and the essentially infinite possible structures makes it hard to even define the boundary of a ship, let alone prevent people from checking out your 'interiors'.
As mentioned by another user, enabling clipping will create problems of it's own, with possibilities of doors /crevices that may later close if another player is building that ship while you do your snooping around. It shouldn't really be possible to trap/ force move the drone around, nor intentionally restrict the drones moving space (I can see players building around other players ships, and preventing where the BM drone can be).
Making open doors collidable for the drone isn't a good idea either, not just because there still is the question of getting trapped because of another player closing off your entry, but also because then there would be a problem if a ship wanted to dock in the hangar of another station/ship. I assume most players use BM to see where exactly the rail docker is, because turning a ship around in the (relatively) cramped hangar is not possible in most cases.
What happens when a build-mode drone slips through an open door or a hole in another ship? Does the drone get pulled away when the ship flies off? Does it anchor the ship in place?
I think it would be better to just only render the outline of any ship that is not a parent or a child of the entity the player is in build mode on.
I really like this idea, but this still brings up some major issues:
1. What if players want to look around for (say) asteroids/planets/random space entities? Or maybe judge how powerful the fleet that just warped in is? The fastest way to do this (especially when commandeering a bigger vessel) is to pop into BM and look around, because turning the ship around is too slow.
2. While trying to dock onto another ship/station, I usually switch to BM to see exactly where the rail docker I have to dock to is. This will not be possible using your suggestion, because all I'll see is a blank outline.
3. How exactly will this 'outline' be defined? I can imagine making every single block have the same texture. If that is so, maybe we can resolve the rail docker issue by having rail docks textured differently. But this still doesn't completely eliminate snooping.
4. The problem of players purposefully building their ship is a sphere around yours simply to stop you from being able to see anything in BM is but one of the countless tactics people will come up with.