Recently, I've been trying to avoid using dark or "night" lighting in RF wherever possible. Lightmaps in RF can't have true black (I believe either 40, 40, 40 or 28, 28, 28 are the lowest it'll let you go), so darker maps tend to not look quite right.
See my
Anubis map for example. The lighting looks way better in the editor after calculating lightmaps, because it displays true black. Load it in-game however, and it just ends up looking really bland and uninteresting.
To each their own, but I feel like brighter lighting works better in this engine.
EDIT: Also, I think your idea for the "Lobby" map is really cool, and the screenshots you've posted for the most part look good. I can't wait to try it out.