Star Trek Online Q&A

GameZone managed to track down Star Trek Online producer Daniel Stahl for a Q&A about the game's visual style, mission structure, character progression system, and more. On races and ship customization:
How many playable races will there be? How deep is the ship customization ability?

Daniel: Starfleet characters can choose between Human, Vulcan, Bajoran, Bolian, Andorian, Ferengi, to name a few. Klingon characters can choose between Klingon, Gorn, Orion, and Nausicaan. The list keeps growing every week as we get closer to launch.

In addition, players can create their own unique alien species and customize how it looks and what innate powers it has. This is a very robust creator similar to past Cryptic Studios games. You could spend hours making an amazingly unique alien. In addition to your captain, you can also customize your officer's appearance

It doesn't stop there! For each class and tier of ship, you can also customize the saucer, nacelles, stanchions, struts, body, lighting, and color schemes based on the parts available to that basic class of ship. It is a ship modelers dream.