On the subject of large sectors, a warning. The game engine loads by sector. Which means the bigger the sectors, the more work the server has to do to track everything going on in them. So bigger sectors = more RAM usage. If you're running the host on a beast of a machine, yeah, bigger sectors are nice. If you're on an econo-box, big sectors will slow the game to a crawl for everyone.
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You should also identify what kind of server you want, and adjust (or not adjust) things accordingly.
Do you want a survival server? If so, don't mess with things like mining ratios. The need to go out and mine and gather resources ever more efficiently is basically the only real gameplay built into the engine right now. Cranking the mining up so high that one or two asteroids gives you a lifetime supply of mats defeats the entire purpose of having a survival server.
Do you want a build server? Then you're going to want settings that encourage building. Creative Mode being on is obvious. Adjusting the advanced build area higher is important as well. Thing with the build area is if you go too high, a bad click can crash the server when someone tries to drop a solid block of 500x500x500 blocks at once. Generally I find 50x50x50 to 100x100x100 to be a good range to be in for a build server, 25x-50x for a non-build server. The default 10x is just too damned low for anything.
The AI difficulty settings are also important to not mess with too much. Right now, they're basically accuracy settings, and they apply to ALL AI in the game, not just the pirates. I've been on servers that had it turned so low that turrets wouldn't hit anything and even lock on missiles couldn't hit a target because they constantly missed and just went into eternal looping orbits around the enemy.
Also need to decide on what level of PvP (if any) you are comfortable with. Is your server going to be a free-for-all wild west style server, is it going to be a "no pvp at all" server, "only PvP that both sides agree on first" server, or what? And then you're going to need to be ready to enforce those rules.
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Some basic protection for newbies on the server is also usually a good idea. At the very least I'd say making a couple of sectors radius around spawn protected. That way no one can camp newbies or snipe them as soon as they log in. Makes for a safe space for new players to build their beginner stuff in without getting blasted off the server by assholes. Because it won't matter what the server rules are, there will always be griefers who make one off accounts just to screw with people, so some actual mechanical limitations are good to slowing down how much damage they can do.
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You should also probably institute some basic build/play restrictions as well. Like no ships over X meters (the bigger the ships, the more strain it puts on the server). That you should dock anything you aren't actively using (again, free-floating ships put more strain on the server). Don't take ships over X size within Y kilometers of a planet (big ships near planets... you guessed it, strain the server).
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Other than that? I'd actually recommend keeping settings as close to vanilla as possible. The more you start changing default settings, the less people are going to be able to import/export their stuff between your server and their SP/other server saves. What works in your server and what works on others might end up being so different as to be incompatible, and that is going to suck for anyone who wants to make cool stuff on your server. If someone is going to dedicate hours, days, weeks, or even months to building something awesome, they don't want it to be confined to only one server, they're going to want to be able to take it with them, and the more off your server settings are, the harder that is for them to do.
While some players may like legacy power, you're basically shooting your server in the foot by supporting it. Its a dead system, the game will never go back to using it, so you've put a hard cap on where your server can go if you do. Its just not worth it.
