Well, for transparency, here's how it kind of went lore-wise:
The Goumon system was renamed the Kotori system. Since the Bard Cluster seemed to have been unfortunately neglected after the many fiascos that occured in the region, having one world renamed after a recent warhero and member of the imperial (Ketsurui) clan seemed like an opportunity to not only be rebirth for the Goumon system, but also the entire Bard cluster. When came the time for a new electoral campaign to name the world's next governor, Bjorn Radtke - a former-shareholder of Geshrinari Fleet Yards whom winned big when the Tamahagane Corporation 'bought' Geshrinari Yards - jockeyed to come ahead in the electoral campaign in order to further this vision.
A keystone for his campaign was endorsement from Ketsurui Kotori, whom was supposed to visit him during his campaign. Kotori and he were broke a deal which would prop Miharu Light Industries has his default go-to company for the work he planned to invest into in the coming years. Radtke wanted to win his campaign, and Kotori wished prosperity for her former crewmembers... so it seemed a good deal until events snowballed when Kotori's entourage were assailed by assassins and the Ketsurui noble made a speedy retreat offplanet.
It didn't stop Radtke from ultimately winning the election, though it wasn't the landslide victory he'd hoped for. From that point on, he pushed to turn the Kotori system into a major starport for the Bard Cluster - just without MLI's involvement since that deal fell through - and instead turned to associates at Geshrinari Yards in order to have a Minato Kodaina starbase built for the Kotori system. The Taiie nebula was already one prospective font of resources for that... though building a starbase really would've barely tapped in the nebula itself.
Building a Minato Kodaina-class
orbital installation (read: orbital... as
around a planet - not
splat in the middle of a nebula) was already a monumental achievement. The Minato Kodaina is already pretty colossal (
it takes a whopping nine months to build), but it isn't so much as a tadpole in comparison to how ridiculously colossal a Bishop Ring would be.
I'll be frank: this is kind of like hair on my soup. I was kind of slowly but surely pushing a recovery story in the region around which I play a senator to, and suddenly after years of ignoring it Himiko goes and decides that Yamatai's next ridiculously humungous station is going to be built there? Sure, I didn't advertise it very loudly except in my plot, but then again it's not like Wes said anything about it before either. Hence my peevish
why now?! reaction to thi.
Honestly, if you want to build a megastructure, I don't think the Bard Cluster is the place. Himiko doesn't need to push for rebirth when rebirth was already happening. If you ask me, a Bishop Ring-style megastructure would be better established next to much more materials. The Jun system - largely nondescript and now the only point of interest in the Great Southern Nebula - is one possibility. Making the Samurai sector stronger with a Bishop Ring - especially considering the quantities of nebulas around it - looks like it'd make more sense too.
edit:
My plans for the Bard Cluster are nothing pivotally important to my plot. I was just slowly building up a backdrop and seeing the Bishop Ring suddenly crop up is just about as frustrating as slowly tending budding garden, carefully pruning it and guiding its growth... and then suddenly someone blows past obliviously in a tractor to start building a mall over my garden.
I mean, it's just a garden, but I was still carefully building it up to look nice, so it kind of draws a "GRAAAH!" reaction out of me. x_x
Then Wes goes "You can have your little garden still be around in this small green nook of my mall's parking lot... except that the garden was supposed to be the point of interest for said region. Now that there's a mall being built there, it kind of sabotages the intent at its one point of interest that really dwarfs the other along with the going ons that built up to it. It trivializes it, no matter how much Wes may think '"it's compatible" and "makes sense".
And considering how much use we squeeze out of large space stations and planets; and how we tend to actually very lightly depict them, going so far as a Bishop Ring just feels to me like an exercise in which "moderation" wasn't ever a concern.
That's where I'm coming from.