Admit I'm not a programmer, and certainly wouldn't expect them to retrofit it to a ton of things, but as part of the FE design? maybe i'm over-simplifying it, but was thinking more like how the transwarp gate to Borg space works; doesn't work until you reach level (whatever. 40 maybe?). Was thinking along the lines of a trigger that locks DS9 once you finish abandoning DS9, and then doesn't turn it back on until you retake the station. Probably a million other things linked into DS9 that make it harder, i guess, but it was just a little thing anyway, wasn't intended to be the big part of the discussion.
Does bring up another question, though: updating the STO year/date. How much retrofitting has to happen now to move the date forward, stop the Klingon war, etc? Maybe there's a way to skip around it, so you still experience all that when you start out, but for people at end-game levels, it is just no longer a factor? Lots of stuff tied to that, and makes sense as a static game, but they can't stay like that and move the story along. eventually , we NEED to move forward, or just wring the rest of the money out of the game and call it a day...