The joys of Spelljamming

[Comet]

Spelljammer. We all love it. We all want to discuss it. This is the place to do it.

So, anyone still playing any Spelljammer campaigns? With the various 3e conversions, the setting is hardly dead. I personally love it for the same reasons I love Planescape: it feels like fantasy. By that I mean, it's just plain weird.

I haven't actually run any games with this setting yet, but I think I'm going to have to. When thinking about my upcoming game, a couple of questions have arisen that I felt the need to clear up.

The act of Spelljamming itself. Here's what I think it is about, based on the aforementioned 3e sites. Feel feer to correct any obvious errors (I haven't read any of the original 2e sourcebooks).

-Spelljamming is the act of turning magic into motivation energy by means of special "Helms", attached to a vessel.
-Most Helms can only be operated by individuals capable of performing magic (wizards and priests).
-Operating a Helm causes the spellcaster to forget all of his memorized spells.
-When Spelljamming, the pilot basically becomes the ship itself. He gains full awareness over it's surroundings and can feel the ship's damage in the form of white flashes of pain. This metaphysical ship-empathy cannot, however, kill the 'jammer, altough it can send him into a coma up to four days in lenght, if the ship takes sufficient damage.
-Spelljammers are totally cool and fight space pirates 'n stuff.

That sound about right?
Now, for the question itself:

I feel like a spellcaster in charge of moving the party's ship isn't such a fun role for a player. You forget your spells and you have to be linked to the Helm if you want the ship to move at all. And you can't do anything other than move the ship. The ballistae, catapults and other weapons are manned by the crew, so the only thing left for the Spelljammer to do is move the ship around.
The rest of the party get to fling spells at the enemy ships and even jump onboard for some sweet hand-to-hand swasbuckling goodness.
How can I make the act of Spelljamming fun for the player? I've been thinking about letting him take control of the rest of the crew (the redshirts, if you will) and use the heavy weapons of the ship. Any other suggestions to make Spelljamming fun?

Feel free to share any stories, campaign ideas and other goodies, if you have any. I think Spelljammer deserves more attention than it has at the moment.

[afroakuma]

If it becomes a serious issue, you can wire up an NPC to the ship instead.

[Dacia Brabant]

There are also... Lifejammer helms.

But if you don't want to go the evil route, or the destroy-magic-items (Furnace helm) route, yeah you can always have the ship piloted by a NPC. Letting the helmsman also manage the actions of the NPC crew seems fine too, though I wouldn't let that override any morale issues the crewmembers may have.

Or you could just houserule that the act of spelljamming doesn't strip you of all your spells for the day, just a certain amount of them, like one spell level per minute at tactical speed and one per hour at spelljamming speed. Or it could do temporary ability damage that's only recovered with a full night's rest.

[Kiero]

If it becomes a serious issue, you can wire up an NPC to the ship instead.

Yep, I personally think this is a good solution, for two reasons. Not only does it stop one of the PCs basically being useless if they pilot the ship, but it also means everyone can be involved in ship-to-ship stuff at the crew level. And leave all the frankly quite boring maneuver stuff in the background.

[Comet]

Seems like having a NPC at the Helm would be a good idea, at least for the beginning of the campaign. I still think I'm going to have to make one of the players try it out at one point or another, just to drive home the notion of how powerful you feel when you actually become a ship.

More questions, people:
I'm under the impression that outside the Spheres, in the Phlogiston streams, clerics cannot pray for more spells. They are, in essence, cut off from their gods.
If this is the case, can they operate Helms with their divine magic? It would seem that all of their magic comes from their gods and since those same gods are out of reach, they have no acces to magic when travelling outside the Spheres. I quess they could "start up the engines" inside one of the Spheres and then use that energy to traverse the Phlogiston, but would it be possible for a cleric to take the Helm while the ship is in no-god's land? My gut says no.

Spelljamming=magic
Cleric magic=gods
Phlogistion=no gods=no cleric magic
Phlogiston= no divine Spelljammers
Am I overthinking this?