We have two new interviews with Craig Zinkievich for you today:
From the Alltern8 article:
The combat in the game is story-driven and serves a purpose. We have non-combat missions and we will continue to add more. But, there are many different versions of Star Trek, so if we only focused on diplomacy and exploration we would be "going against the grain of the expectations of a large number of Star Trek fans." It's definitely a tricky balance.
