Major spoiler..observation
I have come to find an interesting "discrepancy" in the game. All of the ships in the game travel within an area of space that is relatively planar. Sure they go up and down a bit, but almost everything in the system lies in the same plane. This leads to a trick. If you fly more than 13 K above that plane in any system, you can navigate as normal , but there will be no ships. You will not be attacked or scanned for contraband. You can travel with impunity. This not too horrbile of a cheat since you still have to come down to land, but u can at least travel large distances without too much worry. Can anyone else let me know if this works for them too? thanks