So I'd like to bring up a slightly different point -- something that, to the best of my knowledge, hasn't been mentioned before: missing lowsec gate connections. This primarily concerns combat capitals; those limited to five lightyears' range.

The goal of the long distance travel changes is to make taking gates be, in general, faster than jumping for capital ships. However, this is predicated on the availability of corridors for capital ships to travel in the first place. While most of lowsec is reasonably interconnected, there exist three exceptions to this rule.

Namely, sections of lowsec in southern Aridia/Khanid, Tash-Murkon, and Derelik are completely isolated from the rest of lowsec and REQUIRE at least one jump to traverse. The inaccessibility of these regions via lowsec-gate-only corridor range from relatively easy to overcome (Aridia's inaccessibility is the fault of a single highsec island system, Sazilid) to punishing (all traffic to lowsec Tash-Murkon must jump in and out a single system, Mai.)

These regions represent a very important strategic staging location for assaulting the regions of Delve, Querious, and Providence with the capital ships needed to wage modern warfare. I'm not trying to suggest that ALL systems in lowsec be interconnected with each other, but having large pockets of strategically crucial lowsec be inaccessible outside of jumping does not feel right to me.

With this in mind, my question becomes does CCP consider large sections of inaccessible lowsec an issue? If so, I'd be happy to suggest some fixes to the problem.

Speaking as a rorqual pilot (with 11 hulk miners, 1 of which can give max rorq boosts, but 2 have cap industrial ships 5);

I think the change you should make depends on where you, CCP, really want the rorqual to be, in the longer run.
Is it your intent to have them in the belt, or boosting from inside of a pos?

If the rorqual is going to be boosting from a pos, the drone bonus is pointless. You could take away most of the bandwidth and drone bay away even if you wanted to.

However, if you actually want to incentivize having the rorqual in the belt, if you want rorqual owners to be able to make use of the compression on site, while giving boosts, and to be more vulnerable than 'afk 23/7' in the pos, the drone bonus (among some other necessary changes) is essential for giving the rorqual the ability to provide defensive support for mining ships, as well as to have some form of punch to fight back against small roaming gangs/solo pvpers.

To that end, considering that I am greatly hopeful that you plan to make the rorqual actually worth using in the belts (because currently, it is not by a long shot, the long industrial cycle time being the biggest complication, but uselessness of capital tractor beams when working with a large group of miners is also up there), and so:

I hope that you will leave the drone bonus on the rorqual, even if it means keeping it at 5ly.