Firstly, some context for my opinion...
I played Elite on the Speccy in the 80s and I remember my early flights struggling towards Zaonce (I bought slaves in those days
), feeling the thrill of getting to the station, heading past it towards the planet, only to smash into the front of the thing as I made what I thought was a careful approach...
Yes, there was a thrill to my first successful dock but the disappointment that accompanied my early, numerous and time consuming attempts was tempered by there being perhaps no other game out there with anything even close to the same scope or appeal. I would argue that is no longer the case: the game that may have created the genre now has plenty of company. Besides, we were prepared to wait 5 minutes just to load the thing in those days and then struggle to get past that fiddley LensLok thingy as well...
If we wanted to be be really faithful to Elite we could remove the docking buoy. That's what made it difficult for me all those years ago: not the rotation, the lining up. However, I'm not suggeting that we do that.
For me, the only appeal to keeping the higher rotation would be to give beginners that same thrill I had way back when, however, it would be in a different climate now and I suspect that the reward to frustration ratio would have shifted significantly...
I vote for slowing them down. We don't do real scale in Oolite for good reason but anything that adds to the illusion of it is likely a good thing in my book.
For hermits, I'm not sure if I prefer them being stationary; maybe a very slow rotation for them
I mean, it's not like we're giving players a free docking computer or anything
Very much liking what I'm reading so far about the new changes. thanks cim & team