Player Progression

http://www.startrekonline.com/Player_Progression

"Player ProgressionWhen you think of progressing in Star Trek Online, it’s best to picture an inverted triangle. You begin the game with broad skills available to you – the wide part of the triangle – and as you progress in rank, the skills you select become more specialized as the triangle narrows to a point.

There will be six ranks through which to progress at launch:

Ensign (this is the rank you play in the Tutorial – you are rapidly promoted within the first couple hours of gameplay)

Lieutenant

Lieutenant Commander

Commander

Captain

Admiral

Star Trek Online is a skill-based game, meaning the experience you receive for completing missions and finishing episodes awards you skill points, which you use to directly improve the skills available to you. There’s a set number of skills available to you, depending on your rank. For instance, there’s a group of broad skills available at the Lieutenant rank; when you reach Lieutenant Commander, more refined skills become available to you.

The skills available in the early game provide blanket bonuses to the items and abilities you use, and more refined skills will provide more specific bonuses to items and abilities. Again, think of that inverted triangle.

For example, an Engineering officer has the option at lower ranks to decide between focusing on Maintenance or Modification. (He could also generalize in both, if he were to choose to do so.) Let’s say he decided to work exclusively on Modification, and maxes his Lieutenant Modification skill. When he becomes a Lieutenant Commander, new, more refined skills will become available in both the Modification and Maintenance categories. He then could switch his focus to Maintenance if he wanted, and the bonuses from his Lieutenant Modification skills would still apply for the remainder of the character’s existence. By the time the officer reaches the rank of Commander, he can choose to spend his skill points by specializing in any of three branches in his Engineering career.

All of a character’s skills influence his potency with his career abilities, as well as his equipped Kit (which grants additional abilities suited to a particular specialty of their chosen career). A character will collect several Kits as they advance in rank, allowing their role or "spec" to change by equipping the Kit that contains the abilities they currently need for the mission.

In order to advance in rank, you’ll need to spend a specific number of skill points in your currently available skills. To advance from Lieutenant to Lieutenant Commander, you’ll need to have invested a certain number of skill points before you’re offered a promotion. Were a player to invest the minimum-required skill points to reach Admiral, he’d be about half-developed in relation to a maxed character. It will take significantly longer to completely max out each available skill.

The skill sets in the game fall into two major categories: Space and Ground.

Space skills are generally broader than ground skills. They’re designed to augment your Bridge Officers’ abilities, as well as your own. Therefore, even if you’re a Tactical officer, you can take Engineering skills, which will help your Engineering Bridge Officers become more effective. This has a lot of influence on the way your ships behave. If you’re a Tactical officer flying an Escort ship, which usually doesn’t offer much in the way of Engineering bridge stations, having a lot of skill points invested in Engineering could significantly improve your Engineer’s performance, even though the ship has limited capabilities in that area.

The skill points you invest in space also determine which ships you can fly. You’ll need to have invested skill points in the Heavy Cruiser skill to be able to fly a second-tier Cruiser, for example. Certain skills also increase different items’ performance, so if you increase your Phaser Cannon skill, Phaser Cannons will be more effective in combat.

Your Bridge Officers gain experience similarly to your Captain. While their skills are far more limited than the captain’s, they advance through rank in the same manner. Once you spend enough skill points in a certain rank, Bridge Officers can be promoted to a higher rank, though they must remain at least a rank below you at all times. If your Captain is a Lieutenant Commander, his Bridge Officers can only be Ensigns or Lieutenants.

As you progress through the game, you accrue skill points to assign to your Bridge Officers. Those points enter a pool, which you can then assign to any Bridge Officer in your possession. Bridge Officers don’t need to go on specific missions with you to gain experience; this allows you more freedom to determine how you want your Officers to advance and doesn’t penalize you for wanting to draw from a larger group of Officers in your employ.

Since Bridge Officers can have unique skills, they may be more complementary to one Captain’s play style than another’s. As such, you may transfer Bridge Officers to other players in exchange for their Officers or other goods and services. "