I often find that, when piloting a ship, my game crashes or my internet goes down. The first is to be expected (it is an alpha after all), and the second is a result of my low-quality ISP. However, I find that this often makes a lot of stress, since the ship seems to be more than happy to keep sailing along. I know that it's supposed to despawn (since I'm no longer connected), but that's more than enough time for it to wander off on its own for a full sector, or more.

My suggestion is this: When a person piloting a ship has the game close or loses connection unexpectedly, zero out the throttle and rise/fall controls. That way, said person doesn't have to scramble to get it back up as quickly as possible before it wanders into a wind wall and drops to its death since there's no pilot to pull up, as almost happened to me today (or a storm wall, or an island, or a swarm of mantas, all of which also happened).

It still wouldn't help people who crash when not in the helm (trying to refuel the ship or whatever), but it would at least help massively with long-distance travel for those of us with occasional network issues.