Certain missions, such as The Gauntlet and Lesson Among the Stars, involve key battles with enemy pilots or robots that are forced to take place in empty sectors, devoid of any asteroids. However, these battles also tend to be quite long, and often can take you very far from the sector origin. The problem is that in the lack of any identifying features or landmarks, finding enemies in the sector with only a limited 5km radar range becomes very difficult. In particular, finding the final few enemies of the Gauntlet becomes almost impossible, as the enemies spawn not near the player, but near the origin of the sector, which requires a systematic search through three-dimensional space to find them -- a near-impossible task. In the case of Lesson Among the Stars, the four Infiltrators in the mission tend to have sustained velocities of 180 m/s, which makes any fight with them stretch for kilometers into space -- making finding the other Infiltrators similarly difficult.
Several fixes I can think of, though none are without flaws, include
a) keeping NPC enemies in these missions from straying too far from the origin of the sector, therefore making finding them an easier chore;
b) having an indicator for the direction of the origin of the sector, or bringing back /getShipPos;
c) adding a small asteroid group centered around the origin of a sector in which a mission is diverted, then deleting it immediately after the mission ends; alternatively, implement a designated sector for these missions with an asteroid group at the origin of the sector.
Thank you for your consideration and have a nice afternoon.

A and B are good ideas.

For B the center of the sector would need to be targetable or in some other way indicate your distance from it.

We definitely have an issue with mission NPCs being too far from the origin, and/or spread out over too great of an area. This is problematic with some of the newbie missions sometimes, as well.

We've definitely considered "A", and have implemented it to some extent, this year, with some general-case bots, like Queens.

We'll have to take a look at how this is happening, and think a bit about different solutions. But, the specific call-out and mission examples are definitely appreciated.

If other people have examples of specific missions where this is frequently an issue, that'd be appreciated as well.

I should I guess point out that fairly recently (sorry did not note the time or date) I had the 'you MUST pass this' mission have me try to kill the Orun collectors in a sector with two hive queens. This really needs fixing.

Also I found that sometimes you have to fly an annoying distance to get to the next Orun collector. I've had them warp in, outside my current radar range. Parhaps their warp in area could be tightened to a 1km radius?

Also having an npc 'instructor' that leads the way would be nice. It could sit in the middle of the warp in area for the bots. I think players might naturally tend to stick near to the instructor, lessening the distance they have to travel to the next Orun collector. The instructor can simply be flying some regular ship, with WAY more armor then normal, my pick would be a wraith, as it's not seen much. Maybe slap some obnoxious livery on it to make it easier to see, blinking text saying 'INSTRUCTOR' on it and the like.

look... no hands:: I had the 'you MUST pass this' mission have me try to kill the Orun collectors in a sector with two hive queens

You mean the "Basic flight test" end-of-tutorial mission?