Well, I've been working on the habitat ring some more. The air locks on the prominade take you to different sections on the habitat ring where there are 6 shuttle bays and several corridors and some conduits you can crawl through. You can go completely around the habitat ring. There's one room that has a blast door that opens up to a sweet view of the station. However, the habitat ring is sooooo huge that it slows down the battle quite a bit. Also, if you go down a certain corridor and climb 4 stories up a latter, you end up in a room with a couple of vehicles. You can then take those vehicles through a transporter which takes you to a MASSIVE race track on the outer ring where all the docking ports are. The race track goes completely around the outer ring and has several obstacles. But again, it's soo massive. It would take several minutes just for your character to run completely around the outer docking ring. I didn't realize how big ds9 space station was until working on this project. Anyway, with the outer ring so huge, the textures that would be required would eat up way too much memory.
The promenade seems to be the perfect size for the battleground and so I'm going to switch my focus back on that and get rid of the habitat ring and the outer docking ring. Not having an explorable habitat ring or outer ring will free up more geometry and such which means I can add more to the promenade. It's not a complete waste of time either because I learned quite a bit.
I hate to get rid of the habitat ring and outer docking ring but I need to cut the umbilical cord because I think in the end it will hinder the battle instead of making it more fun. I think it would be great for an exploring type game but not for a deathmatch battle.