No, I'm referring to one of the optional controller schemes for ship flight control. Interactive Mode basically had you controlling the ship's flight by pointing your cursor at the enemy target, and your ship followed your cursor by reorienting itself. It was reviled by a number of early supporters as being contrary to the spirit of what we were led to expect for dog fighting in space, etc., and provided an unfair advantage to mouse users (in the eyes of many) as opposed to a proper VJoy implementation for mouse use. Basically, it was viewed by a number of people as not maintaining the controller parity that was promised early on.

I stopped making regular visits to the SC forums some time ago. A recent quick visit leads me to suspect that IM is still in the game.