Abnormal sector insertion speeds on autopilot - bug?

[SirNukes]

One notable thing about the Drake is that it has exceptionally high speed for its poor acceleration. With some quick math, it looks like it will take 80 seconds and 9.6 km to come to a stop from 240 m/s. Replacing with Mistrals might be another solution; with 3x the deceleration they should stop in about 1/3 the distance.

Random theory:
I'm not sure the game has a particular problem with ships going over max speed, so much as with long braking distances. The docking behavior when a ship overshoots the end of the docking lights seems to involve looping around to try again. If the ship had to turn a little toward the dock to line up with the running lights, I suspect that would explain its overshoot-and-loop being aimed toward the dock itself, with collision avoidance kicking in at some point. If that is what's going on, another solution may be to aim the dock away from the gate a bit, eg. if the dock is on the left of the gate, point it some way other than right (down is my usual default), which should cause an overshooting ship to turn around in open space away from the dock.

[RAVEN.myst]

I didn't do the Stargate SG1 gate iris manoeuvre with a SPP and my gate. Not a bad idea for sector security, though, now that I think about it.

Actually, wouldn't work unless you are in-sector when the enemies try to come in - otherwise they simply flight right through. However, I do see one application for Tim's "iris" (good analogy! ) - come in from time to time and let lots of bugs go splat on the windscreen, then go OoS and send in a freighter to hoover up all the droppings.

Regarding gate placement, I always make sure my stations and the docking hubs are placed out of traffic, balanced against my desire to keep them close to a gate for obvious reasons. To that end, I place the hub about 5 clicks above (my preference - below would work equally well), often somewhat to the side (as I don't like to obstruct my map view of traffic that is passing underneath), and as close to the gate as feels comfortable, though not closer than 5km because then it looks cramped and harder to read on maps, as well as providing ample maneuvering room for incoming ships if I do happen to be in-sector (which I try to avoid - so I also place my stations primarily according to resource and customer availability, with ties broken by the inverse to the likelihood of my spending time in that sector.)

BTW: "Laugh it up boys" - I had a chuckle at that, nice!