I can't for the life of me see the point of them, how can a relationship between non-pilots have any mechanical effect at all?

I'm sure that it's fairly self-evident but it's really escaping me at the moment, so a little help on that very subject would be very appreciated.

There is always the chance that the non-pilot character becomes a pilot.

For example:
Someone blisses out and becomes the new authority figure.
The former GM will then make a new pilot and/or choose the non-pilot character that was "humanized" before.

Well I guess that's it about the mechanical reasons to do this, but sometimes you just want to play a scene between non-pilot characters and so it has mechanical background.

Hope that helps.
Best,
René

That's a good point and what I thought they were used for, but they still seem somewhat superfluous to me in a way. Still, if anything, it's nice to have the possibility to have non-pilots interact so I can see where Ben was coming from with this.

Thank you very much for your help in this, I highly appreciate it.

There's three possible mechanical implications of a humanization action:

1) Any character can undergo pilot training, in which case relationships established by a humanization action will be important.
2) They serve to "cap" a spiral of trust-breaking. (If an interlude breaks trust, has a follow up, that one breaks trust, etc.)
3) They create, in the non-pilot relationship, a pool of trust which, if broken, can give "free" interludes.

None of these are the reason that they're in the game, of course. The reason that they're in the game is so the tunnel-vision on pilot's relationships is not %100 mechanically locked in.

yrs--
--Ben