No longer needed.

[Flin Fredstone]

What do you do with the abandoned miners, builders and fighters that don't seem to drift away from your base at a meaningfull pace ?

Also, cargopods that aren't emptied completely are not drifting away either as far as i can tell. Bit of double labour to first store the goods and then order to jetison them.

[Stardustfire]

from midgame and beyond you shoud see so many robot fighters that abandoned small crafts shoudend be a problem, they got attacked with great joy from the robots.

[Death Approaches]

you don't do anything with them. if you touched them, then no, they don't float away very far or fast. support vessels from combat and the ships you scuttled, they float away fine... same for in-system combat not involving you, or ships that self-derelict... it's you claiming them that's the issue, either in-system or from away missions. and not much you can do about it.

what I've been doing is making a "graveyard"; as I'm building up my station base, eventually I run power to the corners of the rock to place asteroid PDT clusters (since they don't require HC nodes to power nor be indoors and heated to at least 1C) so right beside those, I place an asteroid shuttle and pod pad, so that I can claim them to that spot, then abandon them, and they all float down together in a location where I won't accidentally click them. and if I lose some to combat, hey, free replacement ships.

there's no good way to get rid of them. you can draft them and attach them to derelicts and when the derelict floats off it takes the unwanted ship with it.

again, not everyone plays aggressively, but the cargo pods left with gear in them is a tactic! leave 1 unit of something, and enemy starfighters, rogue bots, etc will target those, while you get someone to the ops consoles or pilots to their fighters... I LIKE that mechanic. and if there's too many, I just let them finish it off. course if you play peacefully then you can only wait til rogue bots take em out.