How about a small addition like this?
Say Corvus offers a special delivery mission to abandoned trident floating in some strange location....like roid sector infested with bots.
When you board trident and deliver your cargo you are offered another delivery with instructions how to get to a hidden sector/station.
Hidden station could offer all ships/weps/goods/ores available in VO universe at very high prices. To make things more interesting...weps and ships could be KRAZ tweaked variants.
When you leave hidden station only way to get back is to take another corvus special delivery mission. Entry to hidden sector/station should be triggered only by completing mission.
It doesnt have to be only Corvus. Backstory related, similar mission in Itani space could be used to gain acces to hidden Akanese sector/station, or in UIT space... hidden Biocom research station etc.

These are coming, I hear, with the expansion of teh universe and exploration addons.

Im afraid expansion will take some time to happen.
How about a small prequell like this?
I think existing players would love it and imho its not too complicated to implement at this stage.
Or...maybe im wrong.
Whatever, just felt like posting my idea, heh.

in what way are these stations and sectors hidden?

are they behinde a wormehole that isn't on the map? or do they simply not let anyone but a handfull of pilots dock? etc.

the problem with "hidden" or "secret" bases in a game like VO is it only takes one loudmouth to let everyone know the secret, and then it's just another station or sector.

hmm...

perhaps just an "unknown" system for now, which only bots could warp to. you dock with a large NPC ship, they take you there, you do the job, they take you back.

The best thing would be for the location to change from mission to mission. In this respect, derelict capships would be a better choice at the moment than stations.