I like your ideas Boethius61. Previously when I was trying to write the storyline for the game setting I imagined humans venturing to the edge of our solar system and as travel between worlds became more common place, building communication relays. I think someone also mentioned something like that in a previous post.

I do like the idea of having a large vessel that smaller ships (non-FTL) can dock inside and be ferried away towards their destination. Being so large, it seems only natural that there would be a city built inside the large vessel.

So maybe FTL is like a government regulated technology at first.. hmm.
Most smaller ships can get where they need to go, but the really fast moving ships are military or government owned, at least until the tech is more common. I'm sure that alien races and humans as well would have it as more common technology at some point in the game.

That's just me thinking out loud though.

I haven't worked through much of the storyline yet, but you guys keep giving me great ideas. Thanks a lot!