You'll probably call me a crybaby, but I'm very unhappy about collisions too. In combination with collision damage I'm not able to finish Harpstone with Nexus on Spectre (2nd fastest type) in most cases. With other ships the damage is not that much of a problem for me. But if you stop on the spot from full speed in sharp turn when you hit the wall in aprox. 20° angle, it's not really pleasant. I'm not asking for the Formula Fusion physics, where you bounce off the walls with no speed penalty, but the current state is too annoying for me.
And the collisions with other ships is something probably well known for you and I don't like it either. In this case it's harder to tweak, but I hope it'll be somewhat different as well.
I think the feel of older WO games is there, but some things are just better to change a little, even when you want to get close to the original.