Nice one. I had one ready for this as well - I'll put in a few bits from it as they're additional ... and then I'll post Engineering - we need to speed it up to get to some interesting levels :).
As for your always arriving with more than 2x shields - I'm impressed given that Free Falling only offers a 2x recharger and has that nasty battle at the end!
Anyway... re the switch closest to the pattern buffer, this is what I wrote: it is beyond a bit of a nasty ambush up a lift nearby - nasty especially as we haven't found another working recharger yet. Troopers appear on both sides after we enter a room with a 'hydrospa' (seems fair enough) and the easiest way through is to jump off the stairs and down towards the cyborg by the switch.
Then for the door to the left of the 'central hub': this leads us to a lift with more pirates up the top and then another switch one way and a rather sweeping duct system the other. This connects us to other parts of the level via drops from quite high up, and the odd ambush, and is quite a nice touch I think - like a more realistic Arrival-type area. There's also a terminal at one point, which discusses the cleaning of the hydrospas, and the procurement of scuba gear for flooding, and there's a welcome 1x recharger near the end of the duct to the north.
And then just general comments - it is interesting that there are several ways of going about the level - clearly going left from the hub to start with would get you the recharger earlier and make the ducts more useful, but somehow I think I'd usually go right in such a situation.
As for progress, I finally found what I was looking for in 'Bats in the Belfry' - and it was a 'secret', at least in my opinion! I remember the last time I played it, just going back and forth between the places I could reach and being totally confused. I don't think I was even sure that I could (was supposed to) get into the large hexagonal area, but the actual method for doing so turned out to be kind of hard to find. A weird level all around though - should be fun to write about, but that won't be for a bit.
