Station vs Station mode in detail

[VictorMAngoStein]

So, while a medbay and a brig might make sense, some of the more flavorful aspects like botany, the bar, pool and gym, etc would be superfluous to the mode.

Superfluous = good places for boarding parties to hide/teleport into (or land pods in if it's the catering hangar)

Actually some of those areas would be good for random side objectives like stealing a bunch of weed or something.

Or you could kill the enemy janitor, steal his uniform and run around spacelubing everything.

Anyway, if population is an issue then what about recycling mushroom station? That was on the small side and still had all the departments (I think it had an owlery too.)