I must have eaten NitPickyOs for breakfast... so I apologize in advance... but "determinate"? Seriously?

The picture of the game that's emerging looks like a good match for skill-based advancement, however. Gaining Star Trek levels would just seem a bit silly.

However, I fully support Cryptic's decision to give everyone a ship of their own. I felt the most honest moment in all of Star Trek happened in Deep Space 9 when they began flying their own ship around... but with only a handful of crew. Seriously, what are those thousands of people on board the Enterprise in Next Generation supposed to be doing? I'm just not up for spending months at a time conducting botany experiments in a ship's lab.... or better yet, remember all those little crew kids? How about your first 9 months of gaming as Day Care officer? I suppose you could get lucky and be one of the 12 or so people standing around playing touch-screen Tetris in Engineering. Seriously, did they really need a person to stand there and "adjust" levels all the time?

Ultimately, it comes down to the fact that the game simulates Star Fleet... not a single starship. I think convoys of warships, science ships, and medical ships will be fairly common and a fun way to play.