It looks suspiciously as if the NPC's are dropping in at the normal distance, whereas the extra installations force players to drop much further out than usual.
That IS definitely happening.
If you race to reach the pad at Rackham's Peak, while you're waiting you can the "Zzaappp" of other ships arriving nearby... and
not the 15-20km out that we have to drop in.
That isn't the cause of the issue with pad-blocking, though.
From 15km out, if you're in the correct orientation, you can see that the medium pad is lit up
as soon as you arrive.
If you rush to get to the station, you'll arrive, sit there for 30 seconds and
then a T6 (or Keelback or AspS) will sedately trundle along and land.
Point being, the ship that lands
must be the ship that requested docking (causing the pad to light up) so it's either requested docking from >7.5km distant or we have to assume the ship started off <7.5km away, requested docking and then just kind of hung around for the time it takes you to travel from 15km out to the station
plus the 30 seconds you have to wait for it to actually start docking.
The questions are why does this ALWAYS happen, rather than being randomised, and How do NPCs manage to request docking from so far away?
I've now delivered 30,000t of booze to Rackham's, 292t at a time (I really
must be nuts!) so that's 103 arrivals and the scenario has been
precisely the same every time. Zero variation.
+EDIT+
Also, nice FC BTW.
Particularly like the chick doing ATC.
She sounds cute.
