The thing is, arena-shooters are still too common. It doesn't really matter if a map is inside of a ship or inside of a warehouse because it all looks the same.

To keep things interesting, it might be worth thinking about having a living environment: parts of the map becoming sealed off and separated from each-other for example.
I know I said I don't like ships, but a ship could go on lockdown, or start breaking apart, and the next thing you know both teams are split up fighting two separate battles.

From EVE player perspective I know that battle onboard of Malestor will never occure - it will never be implemented as a eve game mechanic. So instead of maps that will never be 'connected' to eve I would rather see the one's that can be connected, and so on I would like te see battles over jumpgates, eve missions infrastructures, sleepers infrastructure, POCO, citadels hangars etc..

Without that interaction or at least hope of that iteracion in future, Nova will be just another normal fps with some mmo elements out there.
Why would any ordinary pc-fps player chose it over game('s) that are already there, and have solid fundation for another couple of years to come? What Nova will have that others games do not have?