KappaStarVolume

Factions
There are at least three factions. Each faction has some sectors, including one HQ sector. In the station for their HQ sector is a vortex containment facility, with a vortex(NegativeSpaceWedgie) they extract premium resources from. Each vortex provides resources proportional to the entire game's premium player base, distributed equally to all the faction's premium players. That way, premium players have a reason to switch to a faction with fewer premium players, and they profit from any increase in player base.

Membership & Citizenship
F2P players are "members", but not "citizens", of their faction. They don't have any restrictions per se, they just don't get premium resource wages — they have to buy premium resources on the market to do their advanced crafting with.

All factions are post-scarcity societies. Survival is cheap. Any member can flop in an unused corner of a station core, breathe government air, eat government food, and drink government drinks, all for free. Going to space is rather expensive, and the exotic materials extracted from the vortices are very expensive.

On top of subsistence, each citizen gets wages, paid in premium resources. The economic listings may also list the wages of NPC citizens, but the numbers of NPC citizens and premium resources extracted are fiddled to maintain balance of PC citizens.

Gear
The gear of a faction is divided into three categories:
 * Common gear, which still has distinctive looks — think Klingon vs Romulan disruptors.
 * Variant gear, which also has somewhat-different stats. This faction's reactors may have more steady output, that faction's reactors may overclock nicely, the other faction's reactors don't put out radiation that would defeat cloaking, etc.
 * Faction-specific gear, which has no ready equivalent, and wildly different stats from any rough equivalent. This is like the "long-range sustainable lasers vs powerful terminal-guidance missiles" difference, but mostly in soft sci-fi techs.

Sectors
Each sector is a cube, with a station core at its center. A sector can belong to a faction, or to no faction. A sector's resistance to conquest is based on the service buildings in its core.

Conquest
In order for a sector to be vulnerable to conquest, it must border a sector of another faction. In the center of each border face is a quest marker. If equal forces from both sides join in a two-faction raid there, they can start a "pitched battle quest". PVP, organized warfare. The losing sector's station loses 2 max upgrade level, which usually results in the destruction of 2 random upgrades. The victorious sector's station gains 1 max upgrade level, which should soon turn into an upgrade per the voting.

Core
The core of a station is built by the NPC government. It provides a few basic services, and can be upgraded. Crafters can craft and contribute things to raise the max upgrade level of the core, and citizens can vote on what upgrade to get next.

A station core starts out as a large, nigh-empty volume. Think of that project to use discarded Space Shuttle main tanks as habitat hulls. From the richest HQ sector with its vortex containment facility and all upgrades, to the poorest frontier sector with no upgrades, all station cores have the same size and shape. It should be big enough that even that richest HQ sector station has unused space for newbies to flop in.

Services available at the core include:
 * Bank — A basic service. Also where citizens can collect their wages.
 * Respawnery — A basic service. When you don't have anywhere to respawn, you can still respawn at a government respawnery.
 * Exchange — A commodity market, adding an auction house at higher upgrade levels. For example: Upgrading to have an exchange allows the trading of premium resources(including selling them to the faction government, so citizens can collect their wages in cash). Upgrading the exchange allows all sorts of commodities to be traded. Another upgrade allows personal items to be traded. Another upgrade allows ship parts to be traded. The last upgrade allows ships to be traded.

Damage
Damage to a station affects the core. The minimum core has a level 1 bank and a level 1 respawnery, and thus cores are created with a max upgrade level of 2. If the max upgrade level is increased to 3, then citizens can vote whether to upgrade the bank, upgrade the respawnery, or add a new service at level 1. Damage reduces the max upgrade level, and excess upgrades are lost(destroyed), down to 2. If the max upgrade level is reduced to 1, then there's still a level 1 bank and a level 1 respawnery… but if the max upgrade level is reduced to 0, the sector switches over to the new owner's faction, with just a level 1 bank and a level 1 respawnery, albeit with the new faction's looks.

Extensions
Players can build onto station cores, for a fee. A station should look from the outside like a massive zero-G coral reef, with each player house module being a voxel. The station cores thus serve as "seeds" for mostly-player-run towns.

Travel
Despite the containment facilities, each vortex bathes surrounding space in exotic radiation. This isn't visible or dangerous, but it can show up on your sensors for navigation, and it powers the "vortex drive". The pseudovelocity produced by a "vortex drive" engine is proportional to the sum of all the vortex radiation reaching it.

Near A Vortex
Travel is fast, you see lots of people, and a lot of them are strangers. Friendliness takes the form of "I am open to all customers" attitudes. The city mouse thrives.

Away From A Vortex
Travel is slow, you see few people, but they tend to be the same people. Friendliness takes the form of insular "us vs them". The country mouse thrives.