I think the sequencing should be left to the approach guys, we're the only one's who have the whole picture re inbounds from other directions. Maybe even try being old fashioned by giving centre lowest levels and EATs, then you guys can arrange your flights accordingly, we can achieve minimum spacing and centre isn't spending all there time trying to get 10 miles. We're also spending much more time on the phone these days with individual coordination to try and speed things up but some UAE watches don't like this and it is officially against our rules.
As for flying the stars, great if it's quiet (I just love letting all the technical gubbins do the work for us
) but when we're attempting max runway utilization then we need to vector you to get the gaps accurate. As for descent profiles, we can give you a best guess at distance from touchdown but at the moment due to a number of reasons (ie. every star & sid conflicting, only allowed to use 5 miles separation in a system set up for 3 miles.....etc) we can't always ensure the continuous descent.
There's a hell of lot of changes needed in the system here but all though we shout ourselves horse trying to get it we're only atco's so we're ignored. What we need is complaints from the customers, so come on all you mrats guys get whinging to your company, then pressure might be brought to bear.
Cheers FT