Optimist Station
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On the outskirts of known space - there is a miles long asteroid. It has been mined repeatedly, and then the tunnels and chambers rehabbed into a space station.
This has been done often over the last couple of centuries
It was discovered by the USS Saratoga about fifteen years ago. When discovered it was used as a way station by locals, and any upkeep was done haphazardly by passersby. No local government wanted the station or could afford to keep it up so it was semi abandoned.
Starfleet decided to move in and recreate the place as a Starbase and an Anchor for Federation presence in the area.
It lies behind the Galzak nebula, which is hundreds of light years wide. This adds a lot to the travel time to Optimist Station, and cuts it off from immediate contact with the Federation.
There are friendly planets in the area and unfriendly ones. There were inhabitants of the station when Starfleet moved in. many of them were refugees or basically space-homeless.
Starfleet Declared itself the owner of the station, and the local law and order. Most rsidents of the station were happy to be tenants of someone who'd bring, energy, life support, supplies, food, water, law and order to the Station.
A few of the previous inhabitants are cranky. They insist that Starfleet has no right to tell them what to do.
Starfleet handles this as diplomatically as possible.
Operational areas of the station have been refit and are as comfortable as any starfleet space station. But not all of the asteroid has been reclaimed just yet.
Three Starships are assigned to the station, but spend most of their time patrolling the sector and trying to find out who is who and what is what.
The station has dozens of airlocks and docking chambers, bays and landing pads.
The PCs would not be the core command staff, they'd be the utility officers. When the Commander of the Station saw a problem, he'd say to the PCs: "Go solve this."
Reasons, This means they take a runabout and the PCs are most, if not all the crew.
It lessens the Chain of Command issues. In a Starship based game, the play playing the Captain usually winds up directing too much of the action.
There will be a chain of command, but the effect of it on game play and hopefully the enjoyment of the Players would be reduced.
The game can be interesting if I am careful to do some world building and make up some interesting people, places and things to play with.
The station needs enough personality to be interesting, but not so much it dominates game play.
Orrr.... Maybe Andorians.
Maybe a culture of renegade Andorians is the bad guy out in this neck of the woods? (Reason - In the LUG Trek Andorians Source book there is mention of lost Andorian Colony ships. They had a little Diaspora of their own.)
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Disclaimer: Paramount owns all things Trek. I claim original characters and situations in this material for me.