The idea of a top speed in space makes no sense anyway.
It's a safety feature. As-is in Starsector you are incapable of ramming something so hard your ship blows up; your ship's relative velocity is limited specifically for this reason.
would
you want to live on a space station being docked nonstop by ships whose max relative velocity
isn't throttled below the "blow the station in half killing everyone inside" limit?
Consider: Do you know what a hoverslam (also know as a suicide burn) is? It's when you don't slow down at all while approaching an object, and hit your retrothruster to begin breaking at the exact point where a 100% retrothrust all the way up to collision would exactly kill your relative momentum -- your speed doesn't change at all in preparation for a landing, and then smoothly cuts from your travel speed down to 0 at the exact moment of collision.
I would do this
all the time. I'm an impatient person, and I know for a fact I'm not the only one bc people get in traffic accidents constantly doing stuff like this.
If your relative velocity weren't throttled, a single retrothruster failure (keeping in mind that in long-distance travel you never use them for months at a time, so how do you
know they're still working upon arrival?) would kill thousands.
A speed limit in space is the
only thing that makes sense. I wouldn't wanna live on a space station while people like me are allowed to fly at the speeds they want to lol