What does Cambridge hold that is of interest to mollies? Bretonians. The plans are for heavy Bretonian development of Edinburgh, which gives them a reason to be there...
I don't see much problem with turning the NL gate (and I'm informed that that's Igiss's standard, not a game mechanic limitation..there are vanilla gates which do not line up, such as the Camb/NL gate, and from a realistic sense of the way systems work...it still doesn't make sense)...
In Chester the only nomad base I was aware of was in the purple cloud, on the far edge of the system, over 80k from the gas giant...
And I think Blodo answered the question of why one would want a police base in Inverness: Because police don't like places where people dissapear to. The current plan, though, is for a Gateway trading outpost, then a BPA base next to it, to back it up.