[Titan]

i forget how you turn them on. or do you just have to find a ship that has it, and it'll automatically have the cockpit?

[Jeff Vader]

do you just have to find a ship that has it, and it'll automatically have the cockpit?

Yes. Also, you need to have a proper flag for it in the $Flags section of the ship's table entry. I think the flag was cockpit, unsurprisingly.

[Dysko]

Exactly, but the correct flag is "show ship" (look here).

The best way to add cockpits is to make a cockpit-shp.tbm modular table which adds that flag for every "cockpitted" ship. However, I remember reading somewhere that the point of view is offset in many ships, and I don't remember where is the link to a tutorial to fix that problem.

[Jeff Vader]

Ah, my mistake. I've only encountered it once and even then I removed it since it had lurked into the Athena I was hosting and a newcomer was panicing since he didn't know how to turn it off. Hell, even I didn't know how to turn it off back then.