You see, i just don't get this. Sitting in a turret while someone else does the flying. Its why when i have done MC in ED i only take a fighter, i won't take a turret.
Its same with some of the other mechanics CIG have dreamt up, like the full version of mining, where you would have different people doing different things, but mainly just playing minigames while someone else flies the ship. The refinery role sounds particularly mind numbingly boring.
I suppose this sort of thing must appeal to some players, working together on a single ship... but i just don't see it. I think part of my problem is i rarely get time to meet up with other players for extended durations. If i was to do something like this, chances are i would have to log out within an hour of starting, and considering SC's travel times, it may mean i never even get to see any mining at all. And then what would the rest of the crew do? They'd be missing a person to fulfil one of the roles.
I don't mind turret play, like Lysan mentioned...I've also played turret gunner in IL2 for entire multiplay sessions, I don't always need to be the Captain of the ship to enjoy playing. As for SC, there's always someone in the chat, always willing to banter and it's far easier...and more common for complete randoms to meet up physically at a station/outpost, do the wavey/salutey thing, admire each others armour and crew a turret or 2 or to get together for a variety of activities. The difference is the physical meeting up at a station..doing the silly salutey/wavey thing and admiring each others armour before all piling into a boat to go off and do stuff.
Last night, I played for several hours doing solo cargo trucking in the Cat...picked up in the chat that someone was crewing up a hammerhead so I flew over to Olisar, parked the Cat and did the silly waving/admiring armour thing and jumped into the hammerhead turret through choice and joined in for an hour to be sociable ...we picked up a couple of new guys sprinting around Olisar bumping into things who had never crewed a larger ship before and were ecstatic just sitting in a turret popping away at pirates/rocks/floating space debris. Nobody insisted on being the captain or pilot and we all had turns at whatever we fancied doing.
Most big ship owners are happy to just be part of a group...none of this space dictator stuff, which is a sure way to get the crew bailing to go off and do more interesting endeavours instead of being some social retards imagined lackey. Only the sadly misguided cultists seriously believe that handling human players... all with guns as well as their own ships... is going to be any easier than herding cats. Most players aren't even slightly interested in their misguided nonsense, they like the social side, sure...but it ends at that. I should add that 3 others joined our little band in their own fighters flying as escort, all in the same party chat so we could see who was where and who was/wasn't part of our group. We shot down some miscreant players flying around Grimm Hex who just happened to have a bounty on their heads...they took that in good humour, asked for chat invites and joined our growing group once they had respawned.
The in game live chat being the focus of this social aspect of SC is always active, the miniscule play area tends to funnel players toward eachother and not necessarily in a negative sense (depending on your point of view of course), PvP combat is frequent, is usually good natured, there's very few instances of rage quitting or toxic foul language in the chat and there's
always random players willing to help out in missions, help with the game controls or bug workarounds, go off rescuing someone stranded in EVA after bailing out (or falling through the floor)... or just jump into a turret in someone elses ship just for a change of pace and social contact. I've no doubt this may change at some point...folks are folks at the end of the day the same as SC is SC... but for now...it's all fairly pleasant and good natured.
Mining in SC... since I do partake of it. Yes, we do get the absolute dreamer Orgs (most of them are) who imagine running some huge refinery ship with an army of minions at their beck and call to earn them profit...the reality is and will be very different. The little prospector can load up and sell ores independently and very quickly at station and land based refinery terminals... that's how it's designed. There's always been the argument in the 'Orgs' whether 7 co-op players in Prospectors can actually earn credits faster and more efficiently than 7 co-op players running a refinery barge... the answer is yes...and they aren't dependent of an army of subservient minions, some of them flying Prospectors to load up the barge to accomplish this either. Nobody likes folk telling them what they should be doing...it's not work, they aren't (for the most part) children, it's a computer game they play for fun in their own free time.
The Prospector isn't a mini game with the sole purpose of feeding an Org commanders ego, it's an independent small scale miner in it's own right. I'll do a little mining vid at some point...since I can't find any decent ones on YouTube.