Although the Spacedock series of stations proved highly successful, by the 2330's Starfleet faced a problem with its latest ships. The trend had been for ever larger designs, and all projections were that this trend would continue for the foreseeable future. The Spacedock stations needed considerable re-working of their main docking area in order to accommodate these ships, a re-working which would reduce the efficiency of the stations handling arrangements and cause serious problems to Starfleet's maintenance schedules during the work. It was decided to build a small number of new, much larger facilities which would be easily capable of handling significant numbers of the largest starships.

The sheer size of these monsters was far beyond anything previously envisaged, a factor which weighed heavily on the minds of the design team. The original proposals called for an all-new station configuration, but the detailed design work for this would have taken at least fifteen years to complete. In order to cut this figure down as far as possible it was decided to follow the engineering of the successful Spacedock series.

Construction of Starbase 74, the first of the new facilities, begun in 2342. Despite many technical problems the project kept to its projected build time of sixteen years and the Starbase came on-line in 2358. Since this time two further facilities have been completed and two more are underway; Starfleet looks likely to petition for more of these facilities as the need for more and more starships becomes more pressing.

Commissioned: 2358 - present

Dimensions

Diameter : 8,781 m
Height (main) : 10,712 m
Height (overall) : 13,360 m
Decks : 2,400

Mass:  7,100,000,000 tons

Crew

85,000 Starfleet, 
120,000 to 240,000 civilian

Armament:

2,000 x Type XII phaser arrays, total output 12,150,000 TeraWatts

96 x Type 2 Burst fire photon torpedo tubes
Total 50,000 photon torpedoes

Defense Systems:

Internal docking bay capable of holding up to two hundred starships, depending on type

Two hundred hangar bays capable of holding up to three thousand shuttlecraft

Beam Firepower : 243,000
Torpedo Firepower : 38,400
Weapon Range and Accuracy : 1,170
Shield Strength : 295,000
Hull Armour : 25
Overall Strength Index: 137,410

Diplomatic Capability: Five Grade 7 systems

Expected Hull Life: 180 years

Refit Cycle