If they won't interfere with each other I could try that. I just need a way to set a speed <100 while flying manually.

SpeedLimit should also let the smaller escort ships keep up while the capital ship is controlled by APck since they're too small for the MMF drive. I'd use smaller clang drives but I don't know if TP can support those.

I doubt that they could influence APck operation in any way unless specifically designed to do so. APck has native speed limiting feature for any task, but it is overridden with WASD. You can add SpeedLimit=X in a task command like this: command:create-task:cruise-fw:SpeedLimit=30, that would make APck endlessly go forward at fixed 30m/s.

DoktorKrove's "Easy Throttle Control & Max speed Script" script is the one I usually run with.

Which cruise control scripts?

Well it's usually worth checking. Speaking of, can cruise control scripts work with APck/TP while a player is piloting/remote controlling?

APck has only SpeedLimit parameter at task creation, but acceleration is always max (I see no point for such setting in APck).

TP/Clang does not have either. Throttling is not easy to do with this type of drive. I recommend backing it up with internal APck drive for stopping completely (I've used grav drive). It can do OK some precision tasks though, e.g. autolanding.

https://youtu.be/33Y1ge7tUg8?t=52

That's good news. I'll get to work upgrading my current project then.

If there's a way for either APck or TP to keep acceleration/deceleration a bit slower on larger ships, I definitely want to implement that too. Major Jon's clang drive manager had some power settings that worked pretty well.

Yup! A friend of mine did that quite a while ago:
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1877726386
it should be compatible with this version.

Regarding speed, there is no built-in way to regulate acceleration by a user. Only if you fiddle with code, which is pretty obscure in MMF drive part.

The blueprint looks as compact as it can get, but it's still pretty huge. Will I still be able to get this to work if I break it into smaller parts and fit them around the ship?

Also, are there speed controls/limits I can fiddle with? I don't want capital ships accelerating/decelerating too fast if this works.