As part of a mission to get a space station built that would be cool. As for investment, one could apply that to any kind of oxp like say a company that builds a certain kind of missile you like that isn't available on most main stations and spending money to lobby enough stations would result in them being available for sale in that galaxy. Money spent, no future income for nothing, just the opportunity to spend more money on something you like. This could also be applied to a shipbuilding company which after enough investment from you for R&D comes up with a ship you like and you can then spend even more money to buy it. And in both cases, once it's available to you, it's available to others. Money for nothing is a big no-no for gameplay. But I ask you, what is the real reason for wanting or needing to have your own station? I can only think of one, related to a game like Morrowind where you can buy a house and the purpose is a place to rest and store excess items and trophies. That's it. Well we don't need to rest in oolite and we can always go to the main station to get what we need so let's start there. Extra role playing possibilities such as always being a fugitive would go hand in hand with this. You're a badass pirate and can't go to the main station so you commandeer a rock hermit in a lawless system as your own base. Doesn't make you money but after considerable expense to obtain a network to fence your pirated goods it becomes a good way to make a living from your pirated cargo. So perhaps the start of such a grand oxp as pirates would be to have an oxp that makes rock hermits buyable and once bought use it as a garage or base of operations. The other part of the equation to store excess items and trophies would have to be developed. For example, maybe Random Hits could create trophies occasionally as debris that could be collected and viewed from a mission screen. They could take up space and eventually you would need someplace bigger to put them. Could make it easy by having an easy shipping option at all main stations that once you have your own base the option is there to "ship" goods, equipment, and trophies or even knick knacks from the main station's souvenir shop
directly to your base which requires you to spend even more money and this supports good gameplay mechanics. Always give the player something to spend the extra money on which gives the incentive to keep earning it through normal gameplay.
Every once in awhile you head to your home base and admire your trophies, deal with excess goods and equipment, work on ships you've bought and sent here(like the hobby of restoring old muscle cars), etc.
Some oxp's could cause some ships to have "strange debris" in thier wreckage and after collecting a few dozen or more pieces it might be worth your while to hire some techs or scientists, available for hire from hi-tech systems(spend more money) to see if they can put some of the pieces together or reverse engineer something from analyzing various bits. This could be very interesting as a motivator to explore all 8 galaxies.
As long as there are interesting and cool ways to spend your money that you've earned through the normal day to day play mechanics, stations that you own could be a good idea as a place to store things primarily trophies, goods, ships and equipment, all bought and sent there by shipping that you pay for at the main station when you are far away from your base.
A low end alternative to buying a rock hermit could be to rent hangar space at a main station which can hold a large ship plus a certain amount of cargo space or a total set amount of space. The rent would be low in low tech anarchy systems and high in high tech corporate states. One could "ship" things to this rented hangar space as well from anywhere for a price.
There are lots of possibilities with this that could be fun.
