Asterion-class

## Starbase Asterion

The Asterion class starbase is used as a galactic command center by MercDragon. This titan sized space station is designed to service as the industrial, military, and cultural center of MercDragon forces in a region.  It's initial design took MercDragon engineers hundreds of hours over the course of nearly 5 months to complete, but it's internal structures are so vast and complex, that there are still areas that remain unfinished to this day.  The biggest thing that sets Asterion apart from other facilities of its size is that the entire thing is designed from the ground up to have an "explorable" interior.  One can literally dock a ship to the very top of the dome, and walk/ride elevators through a continuous landscape of facilities to the very bottom docks nearly 600 meters below.

## Description

With an internal volume estimated at nearly 10 million cubic meters, Asterion's utilitarian exterior hides an sprawling and luxurious city of facilities.  The base is separated into 8 distinct districts.

### The BioDome

The 8000 square meter BioDome attop the station contains the MercDragon "Amphitheater of Light".  This structure was added to Asterion in early 2317 to serve a meeting place for the leaders of the Light Alliance in the LvD galaxy.  The dome has 8 public docking ports designed to accommodate small diplomatic vessels.  This dome was once also host to the Light Technology convention which served as a place for the various light factions to share their technological innovations.

The Disk below the BioDome is separated into 4 distinct districts:

### The Habitation Wing

Contains numerous accommodations of various sizes and qualities ranging form 1-bedroom apartments up to opulent villas reserved for the Admiralty and foreign dignitaries. (Parts of this wing are still unfinished)

### The Recreation Wing

Contains many luxuries for Asterion's citiznery including a firing range, nightclub, arcade, weightroom, pool & spa, and a regulation sized basketball court.

### The Administrative Wing

Contains the galactic command center, server rooms, a hospital, a prison, and a research laboratory.

### The Commercial Wing

Contains vendors ranging from small shops to service the local population up to large facilities designed for storing and selling full sized ship parts. (Parts of this wing are still unfinished)

### The Hangars

Internal area between the disk and the factory floor used for storing smaller, "personal" sized craft such Toothless and Shadowtooth class courier ships.  This internal area is only designed to hold 4 small craft, but the station also has external moorings for 13 frigates and 4 heavy cruisers in addition to the 8 docks on the biodome

### The Factory Floor

Beneath the Hangars is a massive open manufacturing facility used for refining ores and producing manufactured goods.  It has a total processing capacity of just over 40,000 units per tic spread across a number of specialized production lines, a single node variable production line, and its refinery. These facilities have to date been largely responsible for churning out no less than 11 million mass worth of MercDragon military assets over the course of the past year.

### The Cargo Bays

Comprise the entire bottom half of the station. Designed to house and protect the wealth of MercDragon, Asterion uses a unique password protected storage facility guarded by laminated siege doors which protect MercDragon's wealth from a number of known exploits common with other storage facilities.  Intended to service up to 11 commanding officers, the "locker room" contains 10 access points with each holding 1 million mass worth of private assets for command staff, plus there is an additional 6 million mass worth of storage devoted to the central repository controlled by the station's Admiral.

There is also a separate chamber just below the factory floor devoted to about 5 million mass worth of organized industrial cargo space used by the station's various manufacturing facilities for managing it's large production queues.

## Armament

The Asterion class space station utilizes 8 turrets, which fire a combination of Auto-cannons, VLS missiles, and Sniper Beams to optimize their threat potential to a maximum variety of siege ships.  The default configuration is for this station to be guarded by a home-base shield, but it has area's intentionally left vacant that can be fitted with standard shields if it ever needs to be deployed in a galaxy the forbids the use of such technologies.