1UP: When the player is picking their crew, are they pulling from a pre-selected pool, or will players be designing their own crew?

CZ: You can fully customize the look of your bridge officers, but the initial skills that are available to them are inherent to them. You do choose how to level your crew up -- where to invest points and how to equip them. You can even use another potential officer to train one of your current ones in a new skill.

1UP: Will space combat be closer to something that we have seen in the likes of Bridge Commander (more simulator-esque), or the likes of Star Trek: Starfleet Command (highly tactical)?

CZ: Space combat in STO is tactical and measured. You have to think about positioning, transferring power to boost weapons or shields, when to use your crew's abilities, and what is the best way to exploit your opponent's weaknesses. There's a lot more to it than "fire phasers"! [In fact, one] of the things we realized from looking at other Trek games was that we didn't want to make a dogfighter. We needed to pace ship combat so that there was time to make tactical decisions. With ships zooming and rolling around the screen at top speed, that can be tough to do.