Thanks guys, I much appreciate the compliments.
I think if I've learnt one thing from this project - that for targets that strongly feature dark or reflection nebula I've just gotta get out of the city. I did a fair bit of experimenting with different stacks from different nights and what combination either added or subtracted from the final result. It's not that APP couldn't remove the gradients, its that the fine and subtle detail was simply washed away or replaced by mush that really ruined it. It hurts throwing away so many hours of data but it was better to have a final product a bit noisy from lack of data than smooth and mushy...
I did a LP comparison on my recent comet post
here, and here's another one attached which shows a raw 45min unprocessed live-stack from B4 vs B7 on consecutive nights.
Having said all that I'm happy with how it turned out and have learned quite a bit in the process so I'll call that a win!