Recently got SE V, confused by several things.

I recently got SE:V retail version and have been playing using the Sergetti empire's ship style (the blue sort of crystalline looking ships), and when I finally got access to the Starbase, I noticed it was puny slot wise.

Puny as in the much larger Sergetti Starbase has equal armor and inner hull slots as the smaller Sergetti Space Station, but 42 less outer hull slots!
What's up with that?
Now I can't get the thought of clown cars out of my head...

Things of lesser concern/importance.

The Contra-Terrane engines. IIRC, that is another name for Anti-Gravity, but the description mentions anti-matter. Makes me tempted to do a little name swapping and description tweaking...

Weapon Mounts, for ships, even massives don't get range boost, yet it seems even the basic large mount for everything else does get a range boost? Large gun on satellite outranging massive gun on a Battleship? Seems silly to me.

Are satellites useless in stopping ships?
I got a few on a warp point in a nebula system (6x sats with 2x DU cannons, 2x with 1 missile, 1 with sensors), but enemy ships keep using the warp point to get into one of my systems without ever attacking the satellites on the warp point on the other side. In sector view, the sats are in a ring around the warp point.

On a final note, I am new to this forum, but not to Space Empires in general, although SE:V is the first of the games I have actually been able to get the full/retail version. I have played SE IV demo to death in the past, plus a few times through SE V demo and once through the Star Fury demo.