There seems to be relatively little control of vertical collision avoidance beyond the all-on or all-off, and the two parameters settable under Minimum Gaps for Vertical Justification.
In particular there seems to be a large amount of padding added above any above-staff dynamics. Of course the vertical positions of the staves and systems can be adjusted by hand, but it would be nice on occasion if it seemed more controllable. Or have I continually missed something?
In Layout options >Vertical spacing >Ideal gaps, the two last settings could be what you want to change. I choose 1/2 and 1 instead of 1 and 2 spaces (default values for space between objects in two different staves/systems).
Note that these are not “ideal” gaps, but the minimum value for those gaps that you are ok with. I find generally that the defaults are quite big in there. YMMV.
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Thanks for your suggestion – sorry, I should have got back earlier on this. I already do those sorts of things, but I get the impression that there’s some behind-the-scenes additional padding factor which comes into play, in the same way that I have never got to a complete understanding of precise control over the music image and the bottom of a frame when you have lots of lyrics.