Drew, remember, the Deimos can't have non-tiled highlights because all of its textures are shared either in public mods or other :V: ships. Plus, the examples you cited were all unwrapped models, so you can do a custom highlight (not to mention that some of the tile shinemapping done by Galemp is a tad bit, well, funky. The Arcadia looks really wierd on my system). Tiled images, however, look notoriously bad if you overdo the highlights or try to add in details, as it just repeats over and over.
Lightspeed, maybe the shine levels could be reduced around the lights? Not necessarily at the loss of detail, but just somewhat darker so that we aren't getting a glare masking out the lights.
EDIT: You know, looking at those shots, that raises an interesting question. As of right now, what's rendered "on top" with the textures? The shine or the glow? Those pics look like the shine is covering up the glow when the shine is full bright. It's a mixed bag, but I really think the glow needs to be the priority-taking layer. Or the shinemaps need to darken down to black around the lights.
