The extremely simple solution to sundiving and atmodiving

[Rockinsince87]

Just make ships immune to atmospheric burnup, radiation, and collision damage while being flown by an AI helmsman. Make sure to give those things new damage types that aren't used by anything else so that ships don't become immune to lasers or something while being piloted by the AI.

Occasionally getting stuck to the surface of something during a lag spike is a small price to pay for not hemorrhaging ships and time to celestial bodies.

Question about this for further clarification. Would you still want this if a player avatar holds a berth on the ship? or only apply this if it's a pure AI ship? 

I had some similar ideas about this, like if it's a pure AI ship then grant it the ability to have higher decelerate speeds (say 10 times the overall acceleration) so they can stop faster. It would look strange to see a ship stop that fast but like you said, small price to pay.