I'll second the motion that you spread out more. Whenever I'm looking for a LN ship (usually to report smugglers, etc), I always find them in New York. Rarely are they elsewhere. Colorado is always newbs.
My Bretonian gunboat will patrol everywhere that the trade lanes broadcast a BAF IFF, and you can too (except you're looking for Navy IFF...). That makes...New York, Colorado, California, Texas, Bering, Hudson, Kepler, Gallileo, Magellan, and Cortez, not to mention the new systems. If you even put one vessel in each system, that's 9(!) ships out of new york already...the capwhorage can't be that bad...can it?