thanks for the all the replies,

if no activity is performed for 12 hours (overnight) then does not seem make sense to perform 24 tlog backups with no real activity. so that is why we do not have tlog backups 24/7 but of course I can easily change the plan to do this.

I had a misunderstanding about how a full db backup affects the transaction log (hence the original question), so I now know that it has 0 effect on tlogs, thanks.

Therefore then, if we do tlog backups every 30 minutes 24/7 and a full backup nightly, and restore a full backup then leaving the destination DB in standby, we can 'report' against it with only 30 minutes latency, or do we need to kill connections to the destination in order to apply the tlog/see the new data.

One more question, if it takes more than 1 day to copy a backup from source to destination this is not a problem as Log Shipping will bring the destination up to date (i.e. apply over 50 tlog backups) providing all tlog backup files are still available on the source.