The USS Furious Turtle flies like a pig, but at least it looks cool. Seriously. Look at that picture. Try and tell me that if you warped into a system with a dozen Federation ships plinking away at Klingons or Borgs - a common occurrence in Star Trek Online - that ship wouldn't draw your eye.

After the jump, I'll tell you how I got it.

The first ten "levels" of Star Trek Online are actually grades within the rank of Lieutenant. Once you earn ten grades, you're then promoted to Lieutenant Commander, which also has ten grades. After that, you're a Commander. And so on. All told, Star Trek Online has five ranks, each with ten grades. So you could say the level cap is 50.

When you start playing, you get a light cruiser. It's a nifty enough ship, assuming you don't end up with a cross between a dinner plate and a downhill skier. The light cruiser is diverse and relatively simple. You'll be spending a lot of time in it.

But each time you go up a rank (in other words, every ten "levels"), you unlock a new level of ship. And each level of ship beyond your starting light cruiser offers three choices. You can either go with the heavily armed escort, the heavily shielded cruiser, or the diverse science vessel. Each ship allows for different kinds of equipment and the talents of different kinds of officers, who are a bit like equipment except that they go up levels and learn new abilities.

So once you reach "tenth level", Star Trek Online either takes off, or hits you like a ton of bricks, depending on how you feel about lots of detail. It is at this point that you can finally appreciate how you don't just have a character like you do in other MMOs. Instead, you have your own unique combination of a character, the character's skills, the character's equipment, a ship, the ships components, and a full complement of officers.

Overwhelming? A bit. Thoroughly engrossing? Oh yeah. When I earned my new ship, I spent well over an hour mixing and matching parts and crew members and carefully considering how to spend my skill points to get just the right set-up. By the time I took her out for a spin, it felt like something I'd meticulously pieced together myself. Because it was.

Up next: a peek under the hood
(Click here for the previous Star Trek Online game diary.)