i propose this. design a full star system with a whole bunch of planets and put a starbase/shipyard base for each of the 3 factions these are where you dock for your rewards and ship changes.
around each planet is a combat zone where the game modes take place now because of the huge distances between the planets i suggest that we get destroyers and cruisers to carry these small ships around to the game zones but only 1 cruiser or 2 destroyers can enter the game zone (that is not for each team it is first come first serve).
this will give players a sense of freedom to fly arround the system, now what if you don’t want to play game modes well that is ok too because all of the ships can fly in deep space between the planets so there can be huge fleets of ships just PvPing (clans waring with eachother) with fleets hiding in gas clouds and asteroid belts to ambush the enemy.
you could even give clans the ability to build their own mini space station to defend or there own carrier ship
I know it would be hard to do but this is the ultimate idea of how this game should be you could call thisnot arcade mode or free battle mode or something like that