Players test their ships by sending them on missions. The missions include such objectives as navigation, combat, diplomacy, and cargo transport, and some were created by acclaimed comic book and Trek writer Peter David. The missions can include branching and random events and when necessary, the AI checks the crew quality and ship's facilities to determine chances of success. Each scenario may call for different ship technologies, such as a certain type of scanner, laboratory, transporter, or cargo bay, and if the player's ship is appropriately prepared, they'll succeed at meeting objectives to earn reward money.

Sometimes it's hard to even prepare a ship for mission, despite hints about requisite ship components. Some missions call for certain types of sensors or labs, but the systems screen doesn't tell users what they need to know about available equipment. The litany of sensor types have names like "sensor pallet 1" and "sensor pallet 2", whatever that means. It's not until you read a failed mission's postmortem that you're given specifics about what sensor is needed. This trial and error method is a harsh contrast to the famous television series and its preaching of logic and planning.

This mission system has novel possibilities but its implementation is hardly what most gamers would consider entertaining. Ships selected for a mission proceed completely on artificial intelligence (AI) to mission completion. Players have little or no input, and the experience is akin to that of reading a radio transcript. Some missions are interesting and even humorous, but only the first time. Subsequent plays may have slightly different results, but once players figure out a ship configuration that works, there's little value in flying missions again except to make more money, and then it quickly becomes boring. Making a concession to this, Starship Creator Warp II offers a stealth mode of play where the game runs in the background while players work with other applications. It's pretty sad to run repeat missions in stealth mode just to build money while playing Solitaire in the foreground.

Hoarding monetary credits isn't the usual directive of a Starfleet officer, but that's exactly what players will have to do in Starship Creator Warp II. Improvements and repairs to a vessel cost money and the only way to make more is via the missions. There's no limit on how many times players can attempt a mission, so finding a high paying mission their ships are capable of completing and running them repeatedly earns them the scenario pay multiple times. This creates play that is unchallenging and uninteresting.

Starship Creator Warp II needs a more interactive shell that better unifies the sections of the product, and defines the relationship between starship designer and starship captain. Using money is a less preferable vehicle than perhaps political credits, earned for good mission performance. The performance of such famous starships as the Enterprise, for example, would earn them prestige with which to bargain for refits and upgrades. Tutorial missions should certainly be repeatable and designed to promote balanced starship designs. A campaign, a story, and crew improvement would add continuity, adventure, and role-playing elements. But all these things are lacking, leaving one wondering about what Starship Creator Warp II is good for.