You can do the settling thrust near perigee, so the delta-v from settling doesn’t go to waste but increases the apogee of the depot and increases the orbital en

You can do the settling thrust near perigee, so the delta-v from settling doesn’t go to waste but increases the apogee of the depot and increases the orbital energy of the propellant. Docking dragon is obviously similar to docking starships (Dragon berthing sensors were tested on Shuttle, broadly similar to an empty Starship). You’re right, tho, that the actual SpaceX engineers (who proposed this and developed Dragon) understand this better than random online folk.