Not sure on the battery life, but check out the HP ZBook G3. We have the G2 at work and it's quite nice. It's got a lot of horsepower and I can go 4-6 hours on battery.
The power brick is heavier than my own little 11 inch personal machine. It is a workstation line, not an ultrabook line.
Do you know who OEMed those ports? I've had a horrible run of luck with crappy USB3 chipsets in desktops - with the same symptoms as you're having. Do you still get the resets in Windows 8.1/10?
Well it's very connected with Intel: 8086 -> 80186 + 80286 -> 80386 -> 80486 you know. USB 3.0 problems could also be mechanical problems with the connector. It's a very high bandwidth signal, about the frequency of standard wifi.
2) ECC , IMHO, is useless on personal laptop. Error rate is quite low that "opportunity cost" is too high.
Except that, MBPr is proper solution. So, let's hope Apple to solve your USB3 port issue. (you can report, by the way)
Next laptop I get for hacking will probably be FreeBSD[1] and I'll be running ZFS so ECC would be a bonus. I understand the debate, but ECC should be standard given how much memory we are putting in these things.
1) well, PC-BSD most probably. I am more an OpenBSD person so I might still go that route.
1) No malware/spyware tainted brand.
2) At least 32 GB ECC RAM, 16 GB is so 2010. ECC, because memory errors do happen and cause instability. 64 GB option wouldn't hurt either.
3) HiDPI (retina) display (IPS or equivalent)
4) Fast PCI-e attached SSD.
5) Ability to run two 4k monitors @60 Hz.
6) Stable USB3 ports (My 2015 RMBP keeps resetting USB3 ports, making it nearly impossible to run VMs on USB3 drives)
7) ~10h+ on battery.