Ruinous

While I get that its appropriately sci-fi to have a transporter room, and mechanically something is needed to make docking easier for large ships, I feel there is an existing mechanic begging to be expanded in to this role; cargo shuttles. Outside of the happy occurrence of a partial station production chain within one system, cargo shuttles get very little use, and this is a hugely thematic use for them; kind of like the truck which turn up with its own forklift tucked up the back. I understand that lag concerns will be involved in anything of this sort, but those could be minimized by having only a token cargo shuttle transfer the goods, and the mechanic balanced by 'Transport' software maximum range as it is currently (perhaps its a 'Logistics Software & Tech Package' rather than de-atomiser software) so that the players are limited in range by their systems upgrade and in speed of transaction by the max velocity of their cargo shuttles.

Use the debugging menu (wont potentially ruin you experience by telling you how, easy enough to find out though), then find 'spawn ship' this will spawn a random npc-style (of -one- of the many styles) ship which you own. You can then enter the ship, then go in to the build menu and save the design. The better way (less cheaty, atleast) is to simply use the shipyards and have them build you one, there you can select styles and ship seeds for different looks, plus check the stats before building it

Are AI cargo ships wth purchase or sale orders not intended to update unless a player is in sector? My cargo ships complete orders faithfully whilst I shepard them but dont seem to complete purchase or sale orders unless I am in sector, though hyperjumps proceed automatically without issue. Is this a bug, unimplemented feature or intended behaviour?