Improvement: Orbiting space stations serving as a Sanctuaries.

[FIREk]

I haven't seen this suggested before, so here goes.


ORBITING SPACE STATIONS!!!


What is the point?

Every game requires that central hub for social interaction, "chillaxin'", showing off customizations, and simply seeing for yourself how many people are actually playing the game. Dome City, Stormwind, Britannia, you name it.

We've known for a while that factions will have their uncapturable staging points which (as I guessed long before) are turning out to be facilities based inside, or around warpgates. We also know that there will be no Sanctuaries, at least on planets.

What about space stations, then? One per empire.
They would be useful for the sake of reasons I listed above, and would make sense, since our drop pods (like after squad respawns) need to be dropped from somewhere.


What would these hubs be useful for?

They would allow you to transfer to a drop pod either immediately, or through some room/terminal/spawn tube. They also would be too small for staging areas, and wouldn't contain warpgates by themselves.
Thus, they wouldn't compete with the "footholds" as staging areas.
On a side note, it makes sense to keep staging areas visible, rather hiding inside friendly-only sanctuaries/stations. If a faction takes an hour to mount a massive assault, it's their own fault if a cunning enemy recon pilot discovers that and passes a sitrep to the rest of his/her faction.


What aBout that Massive feel?

One of the worst things about Sanctuaries in PS1 is that they divided their population into 6 areas - 3 HART buildings with two massive halves each.
I believe that the population in such social areas should be as densely packed as possible. Therefore, a perfect station should contain open areas (let's cal them "Bays") that are as few as possible, and can contain as many people as Forgelight can handle in one place.
People need to see and feel that the game is massive in scale!


Any technical considerations regarding shoving everyone into the same space?

Assuming Forgelight would shit a brick if it had to display (and synchronize etc) 500 players on 500 clients, instancing would have to be used.
If Bay 1 is at Forgelight's capacity (say, 200 players), the remaining players should be directed into Bay 2.
For social reasons, switching between bays should be possible, but by default the game should do its best to keep social areas as densely packed as is technically possible.

I'm 100% sure instancing will be possible in Forgelight, since it will be the new EverQuest's engine as well, and no modern MMO can live without instancing.
Even if instancing were technically impossible, there could be dozens of Bays, which would technically be identical continents. This would be the most convenient implementation, assuming that Forgelight can only allow so many players packed in a single area.