Is there a battle etiquette forming here? We're a smaller group so I doubt anything will come up, but I had a question:

Now, this is all said without actual experience, so -please- humor me if I am making an ignorant fool of myself
How long is it proper to wait for reinforcements? Given you could theoretically stall a system for 7 entire galactic tides (at the -extreme- end) and wait for reinforcements (lock-down drones change things)... I had been thinking it's polite to run a turn or two in the system while waiting for a galactic tide to sweep in some close by friendly reinforcements. It would be 'helpful' to stall until reinforcements arrived, but if I were the attacker this would drive me absolutely nutty. Is this why lock-down drones exist?

I had been thinking that if this turned out to be a problem in the future, the client could send orders for -all- systems when sending in any orders. That would keep someone from leaving a system to languish while commanding the rest of their empire. It would take away from the flexibility of course. This is probably why I should keep my ideas to myself until I am more experienced

Anyway, please edify me, I am curious!

from what I've seen there really is no "etiquette" as such. I've been on both ends of just such a stall (in my defense I stalled immediately after I realized what they had done)... I've also played a game where I held turns for a fight in one race's home system until they played equal turns in my own.
The flip side is I don't expect more than a turn or so a day from most players (especially given the time differential between us USA types and He Who Runs The Game).

Frankly, given the "open" nature of the game I wouldn't expect ettiquette from new races. If you wish a more "courteous" fight, then fight courteously, and be prepared to retaliate with matching tactics if someone betrays that trust.

In general, the only real "discourtesy" that's been established so far is don't delay unnecessarilly. Killing, instead of allowing flight, might have been taboo, but coding has happened specifically to make it easier...