In fact the game is fairly open that way. The storyline will actually branch according to how you approach the 30 or so missions broken into Federation and Klingon campaigns (the latter is locked at the beginning of the game), and during a given mission, you're always given the option to talk things out before just jumping into things. A silver tongue is especially important early on when the ships aren't built for combat but light patrolling, though with proper service you will, of course, be allowed bigger and badder ships -- though don't think you'll be replacing Kirk any time soon.

Plus, you have your own crew. To help endear them a little more to you, developer Quicksilver Software has opted to allow you to upgrade not the ship, but the crewmembers themselves. Aided by a Lt. Commander, science officer, comms, helm, weapons and engineering officers, it's entirely up to you what kind of boosts the ship can take on. Using Upgrade Points doled out at the end of every mission, you'll plug them into up to three slots in a handful of disciplines that give nudges to everything from shields to phaser recharge time or power to power drain to top speed to emergency moves. There are literally dozens of upgrades available right from the start, and how you dump points into things directly changes the kind of tactics you can employ when heading into missions.

Case in point: our first real mission dealt with a call for help on a mining planet. Apparently raiders were attacking the transports from the planet's mining operations, so we warped off to put a stop to them. Thankfully, we asked questions first and shot... well, never, actually. The raiders had quite another story to tell, one of the head of the mining operations forcing such cruel conditions that the former miners turned to a life of guerilla attacks. Armed with this new knowledge and the role of intermediary, we returned to the planet -- and were quickly attacked by what was supposed to be an unarmed operation. At this point, we had no choice but to blow the hell out of them, but had we shot first, it's likely the ruse would have been kept up.

The following mission was more routine border patrol, though, and when we came across a ship that fired unprovoked on a Klingon Bird of Prey, things got messy -- fast. Had we not poured some upgrade points into our offensive and defensive capabilities, we probably would have ended up as drifting space junk. Just as in the first mission, though, we had the option to talk our way out of a conflict -- we just didn't pick the right response to the pissed-off Klingon crew.

We still have a few more weeks to get a peek at later missions and especially the Klingon campaign, but if the more slow, deliberate combat and light strategy hold true with constant steps up in ship size and their attributes, we could be looking at one of the most unlikely of Star Trek series revivals. We'll let you know with a full review then.