That's easy. A star base or some classes of ships shouldn't be able to move fast, say mines.
The problem with the game engine is that the core speed setting of a typical ship is NOT absolute. All ships are forcefully made to go faster when the player discovers new technologies for speed, even when it is totally unrealistic for some ship designs. There is no cost required to get the improved speed, and there is no time spend in a shipyard to gain new engines for better speed. Ships get speed improvement as if magic is involved, and it is "free."
Warp one-zillion is just not too unrealistic for a custom ship made to be as a Star Base (for example). While the game does limit the speed of actual Star Bases, it is NOT, saddly, user programmable by the modder! It is limited to one always! Sooo, some modders have created normal ships that can be use as Star Bases, like I have done, but which can move a little faster than a speed of one if a lot of speed research is completed by the player.
The net effect of a ship class with base speed that is a negative value means that ship class take more that normal research to be permitted faster speed; i.e., it takes much more time. Certainly ships designed to be as mines aught not be moving; and, if moving, then such should not be more than 1 per turn unless a massive amount of speed research is accomplished. I like setting mine speed at -10 in order to prevent them from every having the ability to move faster than 1 per turn... saddly, it is impossible to prevent them from ever moving once deployed, because there is really no such thing as a speed of "O" for a ships, since all speeds are defaulted to a value of 1 if the designed value is attempted to be set as zero.
Also, it is a matter of preference. Some players like a slow moving game at the beginning. Such makes "space" seems much larger. This will permit developement of player empires to a larger degree BEFORE contact with other empires is achieved.
In a nut shell, a negative ship speed is a slower ship, but, it can be eventually made to increase speed with enough speed research discoveries.
Here are the details:
A positive integer minus a negative which yields zero or a negative integer yields a ship speed of one.
* A pick speed of +1 (or 1 speed discovery), minus ship speed of -1 = 0 or effective ship game speed +1. Or... A designed base speed of -1 with a +1 speed discovery means ship speed remains at the same speed of 1. Speed zero or a negative speeds always yields a default speed of 1 per turn. The ship speed of zero is not true, since it really is one per turn.
* A pick speed of +1 (or one speed discovery), minus ship speed of -2 = -1 or effective ship game speed +1.
* A pick speed of +2 (or two speed discoveries), minus ship speed of -1 = ship speed +1 (no gain, since default equals +1).
* A pick speed 0f +3 (or three speed discoveries), minus ship speed of -1 = ship speed +2 (gain +1 to default).
So the total speed improvement to over come a negative value for ship core speed needs to exceed by one in order to see a gain above default.
Lastly, ship range suffers the same problem. And negative numbers can be used in design of core base range values of certain classes of ships for the same sorts reasons. Fighters are traditionally for short range planetary defense or near-capital ship missions of defense or attack. Interstellar flight should NOT be possible for fighters in general. So it is NOT uncommon for some fighters that I have designed to have very short ranges for most of the entire game. The "Basic Fighter" falls under this logic. That isn't to say certain later classes of fighters won't have increased range abilties
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