It helps to approach the docking ring/station directly from above or below When carrying contraband: drop out of the trade lane a few clicks before you'd reach your desired destination, fly up or down a few kilometers, head for your target parallel to the planetary plane and then make a fast run for it with cruise engine by diving/rising to it. To minimize the time in a heavily patrolled area even more, i recommend doing what i call "hot docking": when you are within 8Ks of a docking ring, target it, activate the docking command and switch back to freeflight again. By this you should head right for the optimal spot for docking. Now stay on this course until you almost hit/fly past the docking port. At this moment you activate docking again and you should be docking right away without any delay (if the ring isn't in use by someone else that is). Works with tradelanes as well.

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"In all likelihood you're going to die out there. We're all going to die out there, but none of us needs to be reminded of that fact. So you die, you never existed." - Lt. Cmdr. 'Angel' Devereaux