Gameplay

Once you've completed the initial character creation process, you're dumped into your standard tutorial-style first mission which involves repelling attackers from a space station.  During this first mission, your character is on foot, and you can expect to spend 10-20 minutes running around and learning the ins and outs of ground gameplay.  STO is built on the same engine as Cryptic's previous offering, Champions Online, and for those who played Champions this will be most obvious during ground combat.  While on foot, combat is all about quick reactions (more on the negative implications of this in a bit).  The idea is to keep distance between yourself and your enemy, constantly pounding them with your standard ranged weapon blasts and intermittently throwing in a more powerful shot when cooldowns permit.  Melee combat is an option, but >realistically it isn't a feasible counter to the high-tech weapons and armor your opponents wield.  As a general rule, the primary function of a melee strike is simply to "knock back" (something Champions alumni will remember well) enemies that venture too close to temporarily disable them while you continue blasting away.

When the tutorial's enemy ground forces have been sufficiently hammered, players get their first taste of what makes STO really unique: space combat.  When controlling your ship, STO has a completely different feel to it.  Rather than an emphasis on quickly hammering on a hotkey to fire your weapon as on the ground, space combat is all about tactics.  Players directly control the ship's movement in three-dimensional space, and you'll find that this is perhaps the most important part of space combat.  If a captain is able to deftly maneuver his or her ship, keeping it in a position where the enemy's weapons are minimally effective whilst maximizing his or her own weapons, it's possible to take out ships that are significantly more powerful than their own.  I won't get too far into the minutia of actual combat, as there are plenty of in-depth discussions out there already.  Suffice it to say that combat is a matter of keeping your strongest shields facing your enemy (note that shield strength in different directions can be controlled by the player) and battering them with your energy-based weapons until their shields drop, opening the opportunity for torpedo strikes directly on the unprotected hull.

Upon the completion of the tutorial mission, players can choose the first of their "bridge officers" from any of the three career types.  This is a very central element to STO, and makes it very unique in my opinion.  Bridge officers are basically NPC party members that can be greatly customized by the player (in terms of their skills, their appearance, their equipment, and even their behavior in combat).  During ground combat, these bridge officers make up your "away team" that will follow you around and assist you during your missions.  To an extent, they play out just like human party members of a given career type.  Science bridge officers will heal damage done to the party, engineer bridge officers will bolster everyone's shields, tactical officers will kick butt and take names -- everyone gets in on the action.  In space, these bridge officers serve a vital role as well.  Up to one officer of each career type can be active while in space, and each officer will make a unique "bridge officer ability" available to you.  This could be something as simple as temporarily boosting shields in the case of an engineering officer or firing a spread volley of torpedoes to deal damage over a vast area in the case of a tactical officer.  Whether on foot or at the helm of your ship, though, your choice of the bridge officers at your side are as defining to your character as your captain him or herself.