Are you sure that the population will count as a "colony" that enables shore leave even if it is in orbital habitats? Because that makes no sense in that case seeing how an orbital habitat would be vastly cheaper then a recreational module.
What is the purpose of the recreational module if a cheaper OH provides the same benefits???
I've created a small colony using one FAC tender and one orbital habitat of the designs I showed, I've put three FACs there and run the game for three months. The crew (months) on the task force tab was zero.
So yes, it kinda doesn't make sense to use recreational module instead of OH (and the one time I tried, for some reason it didn't work). But that's kinda the general problem with Aurora when it comes to actual gaming - it's not that well balanced. From an RP perspective the game is amazing. I mean, compere it to, say, Master of Orion where you can have five planets per system and that's it. Here you have planets, asteroids (as independent objects, not whole belts) and moons and there is a way to use any of them. From an RP perspective that is. From a gaming perspective? There are problems - a lot of them. Which is kinda the topic of this discussion - the UI is great, but is too expensive to be truly useful. And I like the idea so much, that I'd love it to have an actual gameplay value. Which is why I'm arguing it should be cheaper etc.
Edit: Now I remember. For OH to work you need population, which means it must be deployed on an object, like an asteroid. I'm not a hundred percent sure, but I think you can put recreational module on a ship and it should work in deep space - like, say, jump point fortifications. However, considering the problems with maintenance it's unlikely anyone tries to build "proper" Starfire - like JP fortresses, which means that recreational module is effectively useless. Except for RP purposes of course.