As far as convoys go, it would be relatively straightforward to create default orders for warships to automatically provide escort for any civilian ships in the same system, or any nearby system if preferred. Is that the type of thing you mean?
Dang - board just burped and lost my message. Trying again....
I was actually thinking of a modification to the civilian behavior. Right now its "ignore any system whose security level is greater than the PPM of all present ships" - the new version would be "... greater than the PPM of all present ships, plus convoy escorts of the ship's convoy." I wasn't thinking in terms of game mechanics as much as from the way wet navies tend to deal with commerce raiding in wartime.
From a mechanics point of view, I see two problems:
1) Getting the civilian ship to not ignore a system because the ship knows it will be traveling in a convoy and the convoy escorts' PPM outweighs the security level.
2) Getting more than one civilian ship into a convoy, so that you don't have 5 DD escorting a single freighter.
The only idea I've come up with is to have an order for a TF that says "Form 5-ship convoy at planet Terra and proceed to planet Eden". This would cause the TF to go to Terra, then wait. As civilian ships stop at Terra, they join the convoy. Once the number of civvies in the convoy is 5, the convoy departs for Eden. The thing I don't like about this idea is that it has the player micro-managing convoys - I'd rather have the civlian ships picking convoy routes, but I can't think of a reasonably easy way for you to code it up. Did that make sense?
One other thing I realized the other night - I think the security rating rules give a subtle advantage to player races. The reason is that they have player-controlled freighters and colony ships, which can be ordered into systems into which a civilian ship wouldn't go. I assume that NPRs don't have that advantage - all their civilian ships will avoid such system. OTOH, I just remembered you saying that you simplified a lot of stuff for NPRs, so maybe this is ok.
John