I don't see the problem, if there is a delay the next drop will contains all items that was waiting so next shipment will have lot of item.


Multiple planets/platforms supporting your main production center. Those small ones are in queue too. So you get big science shipment + few small residual ...

Yes please. Pods are free, but animation can bottleneck you because some 3 science pack pods are flying around and it gets even weirder sometimes when you request from multiple specialized platforms. Minimum cargo for sending a drop pod would solve this.