I've been debating some ship ideas. I'm a fan of certain "sensor grid" styles that I've mostly read about, where a ship itself doesn't have enough capacity to really survey an area, so it sends out probes to sit somewhere and send back data. Some fiction uses this for one ship to keep eyes on several planets, other fiction puts close ship combat (laser range) requiring multiple external sensor buoys to help get a proper fix on the target. These are usually the situations that have one big ship, capable of fielding its own PD and sensors and everything, so it's a bit different from Aurora style. But, I'm still thinking about putting microships into a hangar, try and get them to fit into a size 5 or size 20 hangar, outfitted only with a small engine, a sensor suite, and some moderate fuel, with the intent of sending them out to act as forward eyes. With the "sit 5 deg clockwise at X distance" options, this could be even easier. I've also realized that a drone could be fit with sensors and some fuel, and fired at a waypoint, where it would wait until its fuel ran out, allowing for some ranged recon of a sort.
This doesn't really apply to the shipyard size argument, but it's an interesting tactic and would need some large vessels to sport it.