It looks to me like you can drone fly any smaller ship, and park your ass on any bigger ship. If parking means you can waltz up to the bridge and take command, walla.
I've never had a wish to fly the trade ships, or the battleships. Have them, hell yes, but not pilot them myself. I'm more curiously worried as to the changes this means for combat than the changes it means to which ships you can fly. A great deal of the income from combat was because "pilots" either dropped cargo or bailed ass first into space to keep from dying. Efficient capping was a skill on it's own.
If all the shit below yours is piloted by a drone, why would the drone surrender it's ship to avoid dying? If it's not, how would a pilot bail on a "ship" and turn it over as a "drone" to you? If the ol' boy has a retrieval system for cleaning up after battle that takes care of bringing the captured "ships" onboard, or if they're "drones" then maybe the right damage knocks out the computer and lets you scoop up a quick repair job. There are solutions to my issues, and it seems crazy that they'd nuke such an integral part of the game.
If they have, it's a lot more realistic than the fleet commander hopping out of his battleship to ride stick in an m5. Quite possibly a major improvement.