The problem with orbital habs is that they have a crew morale requirement now just like ships. And they're a hell of a lot harder to move. I suppose if you didn't mind it being OMFGbig, you could build a recreation module into the orbital hab, so it would have unlimited "on-station" time. But then you're talking probably 300,000-400,000 ton range. Which means either building a bigass tug or putting a ton of engines on it, and either way it's going to craaaaaaawl.
I'm not so sure of that, i know morale failures aren't supposed to affect ships unless they have certain military components, also I've noticed the orbital habitat I'm using in my Jupiter game still has morale at 100% after 9 years in space, for reference here's the design:
%Tranquility Base class Orbital Habitat 151,656,450 tons 30510 Crew 191376 BP TCS 3033129 TH 62500 EM 0
20 km/s Armour 1-25332 Shields 0-0 Sensors 1/1/0/0 Damage Control Rating 1 PPV 0
MSP 1 Max Repair 31.25 MSP
Intended Deployment Time: 120 months Spare Berths 0
Habitation Capacity 30,000,000
125 EP Commercial Nuclear Thermal Engine (500) Power 125 Fuel Use 8.84% Signature 125 Exp 5%
Fuel Capacity 2,500,000 Litres Range 0.0 billion km (18 days at full power)
This design is classed as a Commercial Vessel for maintenance purposes
This design is classed as an Orbital Habitat for construction purposes
This obviously isn't the kind of thing you would be constructing during a game, It's basically just an alternate homeworld to earth, the 20km/s speed is apalling, but that's faster than jupiter itself orbits and it's possible to get it there from earth in only 2 years, less if things are lined up right, of course it would need to refuel 25 times and 62 million fuel is far more than i could afford in this game, so it was spacemastered in.
Also to those saying that low populations starts are slow/aren't feasible, smaller populations are more efficient/ less population is dedicated to service industry and more to manufacturing, also the habitat uses 0% for agriculture which is a plus, I think taking everything into account My production is basically no less than about half what it would have been with a normal 500 million earth start.
The big problem of course is slow growth, i need to offload colonists as fast as possible to get income up to levels that will allow me to keep industry and research going at 100%.
I really should have started with more fuel harvesters, and i guess i should have had dedicated tankers too since i can't seem to get my harvesters to automatically dump their fuel and get back to jupiter.