@Shadowfox, have you any advice for a newbie?
Heh ... depends on exactly the advice you're looking for - Star Trek has a much steeper learning curve than most other MMOs - level 30 or not, there's still a lot I don't know.
The skill system is particularly tricky for me - because you automatically earn your skills, space and ground based, as you level up, and there really aren't a lot of them. How your space-battles turn out (and the skills you use) is based almost entirely on which Bridge Officers you choose to man your stations and what skills they're equipped with. I initially thought you were stuck with the skills that the officers came with, until I discovered you can actually retrain them in specific skills at certain NPCs. So that adds to the complexity.
My advice would be, spend some time exploring the station and the NPCs, figure out what they do, pay very close attention to what your crew's skills are and how you distribute them across your ship. When you get to Lt Cmdr you're going to get 3 classes of ships to choose from - Science, Escort and Cruiser. Cruisers are, based on what I've heard, are the best choice for Engineers, but on the flipside, they're also the slowest. They have the most crew-members, so their hull-repair rate is the fastest.
Escorts (tac ships) are greased-lightning in space, but they have small crew-complements and lower shield-strength, so they tend not to last long when fire is concentrated on them, but they do major damage - if you have a sharp Sci officer in your group you can last long enough to take out Borg ships.
Science vessels are somewhere in between.
I'm busy putting together a starter guide for STO, but because of the involved complexity it's going to take a while
