Star Trek: Timelines is the new social role-playing title from the Game of Thrones: Ascent team

Kirk versus Picard. Which Starship Enterprise captain is better? It’s the toughest question any human will ever have to face, but one game is willing to at least give you the chance to figure out who will make the better crew member.

Developer Disruptor Beam is going from fantasy to warp 9 with its next game, Star Trek: Timelines. The Game of Thrones: Ascent developer just released the Facebook social game on tablets last week, and now it is shifting its focus to the final frontier. Timelines is a strategy role-playing game that will have players piecing together their own crews from characters across all of the original Star Trek shows. Gamers will then have to send their teams on missions and make decisions that will impact the story.

“Star Trek: Timelines is the first multiplayer Star Trek game on both web and tablet,” Disruptor Beam chief executive officer Jon Radoff told GamesBeat. “A strategy-RPG with an in-depth and immersive storyline, players will build their ultimate crew and starship all while making moral and tactical decisions that impacts the overall game.”

Like Game of Thrones: Ascent, Star Trek: Timelines is about giving players an in-depth story that they can explore. Additionally, would-be captains also get to explore a universe brimming with familiar planets and characters.

“I grew up watching the franchise and have always felt that the best episodes were those that went beyond the coolness of the technology or vastness of space; the ones which told the story of characters making important decisions that had an impact on others, on civilizations, planets, and technology,” said Radoff. “Star Trek: Timelines will encompass all of these concepts, allowing you to explore the vastness of space along with your friends — letting you live out the ‘where no man has gone before’ mantra we all love — but will also allow you to make decisions that impact your future, your friends, and even the fate of the galaxy.”

Just as in the show, players can solve quagmires and dilemmas using violence, diplomacy, and science. Captains will also have to collect and manage resources to help upgrade their ship. The game will come out as free-to-play. Gamers can grind to improve their ship, or they can drop some cash to purchase items.

Timelines is still in the earliest phases of development. Radoff told GamesBeat that Disruptor Beam wanted to let its fans and the wider audience know that it has the Star Trek license.

The studio plans to continue adding story content to Game of Thrones: Ascent. Timelines won’t interfere with that.

“We’ve seen some challenges with the social games market, no doubt,” said Radoff. “Facebook has struggled as a gaming platform, but in our case the Game of Thrones license surely helped for Disruptor Beam. And, we’ve now seen much success on Facebook over the past year with three million players of Game of Thrones: Ascent across platforms, including Facebook.”

Radoff will have Disruptor Beam continue to leverage existing properties to help build up the company’s library of story-driven titles. In fact, the CEO says he wants to emulate a company like BioWare, which has built story-driven triple-A games for PC and console.

“But no one has really done that for the social and mobile market,” he said. “We will be the first to do that.”