Glad to help.
I think leaving ships with a speed of 1 is fine, we don't want them to not move at all.
I had another thought on drives and jump gates.
Instead of gradually increasing drive and jump gate bonuses, set them to a +10 Speed across the board. Make the early jump gate/drives hideously expensive and the drives very large. I'm thinking ~5000 each and a size of 20-30. As you move up the techs the cost and size drop until they become practical in smaller ships. Here's a sample using the names you've listed on the tech page as a start. Much tweaking may be necessary.
engine techs | spd | size | $ | component | tech $ |
Proto Jump Engines | 10 | 30 | 5000 | Reaction Engine | 100 |
Early Jump Engines | 10 | 25 | 3200 | Versal Fusion Engine | 200 |
Practical Jump Engine | 10 | 21 | 2000 | Plasma Engine | 400 |
Ion Jump Engine I | 10 | 18 | 1200 | Garodney Ion Engine | 800 |
Ion Jump Engine II | 10 | 15 | 700 | Particle Thrust Engine | 1500 |
Ion Jump Engine III | 10 | 12 | 400 | Beigle-Bryant 9000A Particle Thrust Engine | 3000 |
Gravimetric I | 10 | 9 | 200 | Yentari Graviton Engine | 8000 |
Gravimetric II | 10 | 6 | 100 | Graviton Engine | 15000 |
Gravimetric III | 10 | 4 | 50 | Stalasha Gravimetric Drive | 20000 |
Equivalent Jump Gate techs could also be created, either using the engine tree or perhaps a branch of it and/or starbase tree.
The later particle cannon techs look good, but there are some issues when comparing them with the laser techs. Right now it is almost worthless to research laser except to get to the evil techs. To get to equivalent laser techs as particle cannon techs much more research is required and the components still cost more. This doesn't mean they need to be changed. The other way to rebalance between particle and laser is to make barrier tech less practical. If barrier tech is more expensive to research, and/or bulkier, and/or expensive to use it can greatly improve the practicality of lasers in the later stages of the game.