The fact that I remember both of these vividly, I think, says something 
Asteroid fields maybe weren't that *bad*, just intense, but the escort missions...
I remember that too, I think. Wasn't that Drayman carrying a book or something silly like that from/to Planet Oxford (I think) and the Retros hate books/tech/puppies/everything. I remember cheesing that mission with FF missile spam, they break attacking to evade and it bought time.
Even back then I liked to understand game mechanics and something that bothered me caused me to understand a mechanic of the asteroids. They always travel towards you at a relative speed, meaning if you were going in a straight line fast and stopped the already spawned asteroids would continue to move at that speed towards you. It meant that the asteroids exist relative to you, so if you fly at max speed moving up and down 30 degrees steadily they will never hit you. A neat trick the devs pulled to avoid having to track individual asteroid movements 360 degrees around you, having them all behave like they were on rails relative to the players movement prolly meant less system resources required.
I screwed around with it to destroy other ships at times.
Tarsus was great for weapon spread, if you hit one you almost always hit both. Centurion would land 2-4 hits usually missing at least 1 from the spacing vs Talon sized ships, vs big ships is a different story. The cockpits were amazing, the look/layout and design matching the actual ship appearance. I didn't realize it at the time but they were a brilliant lore friendly UI.
