star trekkin' across the universe....
I've spent this week playing Star Trek Online, which is a free-to-play MMORPG set in the star trek universe.
at this stage in the Trek history, romulus has been destroyed via supernova, as per the setting of the most recent star trek movie, but it doesn't appear that spock went to the alternate universe of the film.
The klingons took advantage of the political instability caused by the destruction of romulus to declare war on the federation, the Borg are showing up in a big way, and the changelings from deep space 9 have come out of the delta quadrant and are busily stirring the pot.
so, there is a lot going on :)
You start as an ensign of a ship, beam away to provide support to a damaged vessel during a borg attack, repel the borg invaders from that ship and find out on your return that everyone higher rank than you has died, leaving you acting captain for the duration of the action.
You finish off the borg invasion fleet and star fleet headquarters decides you did okay for a greenhorn, so they let you keep the ship - battle promotions being what they are in wartime. Also, the ship is about 20 years old and not all that risky an investment to test the capabilities of a young officer. You are made acting Captian of the vessel, and officially hold the rank of lieutenant.
Since you can't boss around anyone higher rank than yourself, all your bridge crew has to be made up of ensigns, and can only be promoted after you raise in rank yourself.
I'm a big fan of the ship-to-ship space battles, the away missions are okay, but not gripping. It is surprising how much strategy can be involved in the space missions.
There is apparently a crafting system i am studiously collecting resources for, but have no understanding of so far, and several types of game currency.
free accounts are limited in the number of inventory slots they have, how many officers can make up the duty roster - which is a whole other system all in itself - and you seem to get the basic versions of any star ship when you rank up and are given a credit to requisition a new one, rather than the "refit" start ships - which tend to have higher stats, extra weapon slots, or more bridge personnel (which leads to more tactical options in space battles)
there is a market to trade dilithium for cash-shop credits, that value seems to fluctuate by supply and demand, and you can also use dilithium to requisition new bridge officers, or more powerful ship systems and weapons. the basic currency is "energy credits" which are gained or spent buying and selling consumables in stores, and spent to generate anything you make using your own ship's replicators, which seems like a cool system.
the crafting system seems to involve researching found items to be able to replicate them later, but i haven't figured it out yet.
the only other type of money i can remember is gold-pressed-latinum, a favorite of Quark's from deep space 9. i haven't figured out how to get any of that yet :)