Actually, it's the other way round. The away missions lack complexity while the space combat has a lot more. I think you're just not very good at it judging from your description of what you need to do:
a) Flying alongside them will expose a single side to enemy fire which will quickly drain your shields + the back and front banks don't deal that much damage
b) you're supposed to keep the ship with its forward side as much towards your target as possible. Why? Because a photon (or other projectile weapons) do a HELL Of a lot more damage than phasers and they do a lot more physical damage so when a shield is down, you can do massive damage.
c) you shouldn't just activate your skills whenever they have refreshed - you need to constantly focus the shield regeration on the spot that gets hurt and then use the skill to regerenate when local regeneration is not sufficient anymore. Also, the skill to drain shields, for example, should only be used when it needs to be drained. If you're blasting away and one side is gone, there's no need to use that skill! Use it when he suddenly starts to turn away from you, to reduce the shields at the other side of him which are still at 100%. Evasive Maneuvers you keep when you're under heavy attack and need to quickly turn your most shielded side towards the most fire or when you need to duck between asteroids.
With most of those skills, it's a matter of using them at the right time. This is not WoW where you can just click down the row of abilities on every single enemy. Most of these skills will be completely useless or only have a minor advantage if you use them at random and you'll miss openings for when they really ARE useful. In any case, all this shows to me there IS a lot of tactics and strategy attached to combat. Combine it with the choice of different officers, different ship weapons (with different spreads) and different energy layouts (weapons, shields, speed, balanced) and you got plenty of depth.
Of course, if you go flying in like a maniac shooting at everything and using every skill when they become available, you'll get blown to pieces. The trick is to lure ships away, to use asteroids to avoid fire, to get close to the enemy when your ship is about to blow up (can easily take out another ship if its shields are down), to fight in team and focus on the same enemy on the same part of his shields, etc.
On the other hand, away missions don't have directional shields nor many of the manoeuvres.

Wrong. You should fly broadside with them as long as their shields are up because your phasers/disruptors BOTH hit then (front and aft) and their shields go to hell fast (as the game states: energy weapons and disruptors etc. against shield, torps against hull). Its also way easy to put all the energy in the shield that gets the most hits and keep it stable.
Photon Torps do most damage to hull only, so right before their shield goes down after flying parallel to them (and hence, do more damage because both your weapons hit), turn correctly with the nose to hit them with the torps for maximum performance. See point (A) as of why you should fly broadside (check google for ST:O Tipps to confirm this) before their shields are down.
Given that i barely every die i think i DID understand the game and the officers special, and of course i do not spam them but use them when they are needed at the right time.
Iam aware of all the above and asure you that this is not how i play. And because i know what complex space fight should look like (See Eve Online for a good example), i can tell that ST:O lacks a lot in that area.
Granted, i only have tried all the weapons/modules/and so on that i could akquire the first few Levels (Lt. 7), but coming from the eve universe, where you have literally millions of ship configurations, ST:O lacks every kind of depth when it comes to space fights.
Actually i've seen a directional shield in an away mission once, guess it was a special item or a rare drop. The Char could make it appear in a 90 degree sphere cut in front of him. Unfortunately i did not talk to him as for what item it was he used or had fitted.
The good side on ST:O is the flair, the downside that its probably not even closely complex enough to keep me interested for longer. Specially since crafting appears to be completely absent at the moment, and there really is no player-drive economy (or any economy) whatsoever besides in-game-currency-burning by buying upgrades.

not being an MMO player, I'm not quite sure what you mean by crafting. Is this going on a quest to find a super awesome stick and then taping a dagger to the end to make a cool spear?
If you're talking about an enchantment style thing where you can increase the power of your gear, thats what the sample things you collect are for, the commander in the science section of the starbase will take the samples and your weapon or tool and apply a small and not really worth the effort boost (a dozen bits of anomalous data and a mk2 phaser and I get a mk2 phaser with a +2% critical chance)

In the Exchange (otherwise known as "auction house") there's a category called "recipe", so I assume there will be some sort of crafting involving putting some components together to make a new shiny thingamajig (ie. stick+dagger=spear), that's usually what's known as crafting. At least in WoW "recipe" is not only for food but also the catch-all phrase for recipes (cooking and alchemy), patterns (tailoring and leatherworking), and plans (blacksmithing and engineering).
On another note, I am slightly annoyed at "space" being pretty much two-dimensional. I mean... sure ships can be stacked on top of each other, but why can't I do a barrel roll, a loop, or fly "up" or "down" in more than a 45 degree angle? It would certainly make some evasive maneuvers easier, and , yes, some people would become seasick. I'm almost surprised they didn't add gravity as well.

amd athlon xp 2800 2.0 ghz with an d radeon x1600 pro

They've posted an update on how the beta is going, the gist seems to be "wow, people like star trek, better buy another server or 2"
http://startrekonline.com/node/899

I like how they added a "Where's Sulu?" mention. Also, good to hear they're working on the whole "every ship targets you so you're screwed" issue. It's made for some very frustrating missions with other people, to the point where I thought of going into my options and disabling the thing where they throw you in with a team looking to do the same mission.

Well if all the enemy target one player exclusively, he can run away whilst the other people pound into them. I've lost a few ships to that massed fire thing though, in fact persistance is the only way I've finished a few missions.
Also, if you ever beam down for a ground mission and your away team stay on the ship, enter "/fillpetteamlist" into the chat box and they'll spawn in a few seconds.

Usually the first guy to fly in gets screwed. There's no "tanks" in this game so even if you put your shields at maximum and constantly cycle them, you're going to get killed very quickly. It's a sound strategy from the AI though: focussing fire on a single ship is the way to go.

Flying away is not an option most of the time - when you're up against several battle ships, your shields will be down in seconds and you won't be able to turn fast enough let alone be able to outrun them. It's a bit different than other MMOs which do let you run away: Eve lets you warp out, WoW makes you run faster than most monsters, etc. but in STO, running is usually not an option. Then again, death doesn't mean much there, does it?

I find bumping up the shields with the power settings, being ready to transfer power to forward shields & having emercency power to shields with an engineer works well

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Thanks, I've needed that one a couple of times. Also, though the NPC team members are not nearly as effective as real players, they're actually much better than I expected them to be... at least the times they manage to figure out how to move instead of just disappearing into thin air. I have completed a couple ground missions with me as the only player, and a few space ones as well thanks to the downscaling of enemy forces that seem to happen.

Well, i've spent another few hours of my life playing ST:O now so i feel free to add a few more notes from my point of view:
1. Space combat does get better. Slightly. Not any tactical or so, but at least the enemies are harder and timing the use of the special powers of the officers gets more important. Besides that, its always the same - also the scenario. Go into system, find objective, its surrounded by enemies / enemies decloack / ... - nothing new there in the 15 Missions or so i did so far. Bomb away enemies, either done or => ground mission. Oh, and one thing: The controls are horrible. And i mean, horrible. Part of my job is also designing GUIs, and if i'd come up with something like the space ship controls in ST:O, they'd put me in a sack and beat me senseless.
2. The ground missions get more fun faster as you get better equipment appearently faster than for the ships. Maybe tweaking the drop rates might help there. At least they tried to build story into those missions, so they 'feel' better than for example in "Fallen Earth". Also, you get more special abilites sooner (also depening on eqipment partially, tho) so have a higher variety of how you play.
3. Star Trek Bonus: The longer you play it, the more you feel home if you grew up with star trek and liked the series and movies . The sound samples alone (Wee! Photon Torpedo!) add a lot to the atmosphere. That makes it easier to look over the many obvious flaws.
In fact i have a weird feeling playing ST:O .. its half yay, half nay. On one side its just so unfinished (dont come with 'its still beta' now, release is in less than two weeks) and does nothing better than any other MMO, lots of bugs (yes, i know. Release is still soon!). On the other side, its Star Trek and combines interesting gameplay parts (Space + Ground Missions). Still.. if i want better ground missions i prolly could play 10 other MMOs, and for better Space combat theres always Eve and soon another space MMO .. which name i forgot.
I'll continue to play it and see if its gets massively better, which i hope. Changes are:
* That i get lots of equipment in the next missions
* A better/bigger ship (more fitting slots!) that is not sluggish, hopefully soon on next rank
* They make the HORRIBLE controls in-space better (!!!)
* Bugs will get less (as with every MMO)
* REAL crafting. Not 'bring random stuff from random signatures you randomly find, and trade that for something.
* A bridge to command from instead the external view. At least for traveling that might add to the atmosphere. Yes, iam aware you can visit your bridge and have others beam to it for coffee & cookies, but its totally useless for anything but looking shiney. Short: I want to sit in my captain chair :(
* Well, lots and lots of other stuff
It might sound iam whining, but this is just how i see things. My list of things i hate for other MMOs isn't really shorter (Example: WOW = Too easy / repetitive / forces you to play with others to see high level content. EVE = forced PvP. I dont like PvP at all... and so on)
So basically its just my two cents. My guess is that the game will live for a a few years anyway, even if it doesnt get better, because hard-core trekkies might be blinded enough not to see all the things ST:O does not make good.
For some weird reason i feel like playing it again this evening ^^
- G

Well I have to say I rather enjoy having other people to play it with, a session with maighstir and another with fenixp have convinced me that if enough people I know get the game I'll jump on board. WAY more fun than going solo because you can take the piss when your teammate does stupid stuff.
Also, I'm rather pleased with my progress, I just got promoted to Lieutenant Commander (I did a dance at the promotion ceremony) and got me a fancy new ship. Since I seem to have taken to being a damage sponge, I opted to take a cruiser and so far its pretty damn sweet.
Attached are pictures of my new command, the USS Shining Light

USS Shining Light? The only way I can top that is to call mine the USS Gay Abandon.

I must admit that I've come to like the game and may well consider getting it -- and that's just from the fun I have soloing. Although the group space combat isn't too bad either.