Complete Monster: Legate Matan is the leader of House Arterius, a powerful military faction in post Dominion War Cardassia. Matan manages to make contact with the Kessok, a powerful but xenophobic species in the Maelstrom sector, and, convincing the Kessok that the Federation is planning to invade their territory, gets their help to build a new high-tech Cardassian military fleet. Secretly experimenting with a Kessok Solarformer, a device that can regulate the energy of a sun to make a planet more hospitable for colonization, Matan accidentally destroys a Federation colony and causes heavy damage to two other colonies, sun to go supernova, while he tried to weaponize the Solarformer. Feeling no guilt, Matan, to hide his involvment, has his ships attack anyone who investigated this event. Declaring war on the Federation, Matan led full-on unprovoked attacks on non Cardassian ships in the sector, killing countless people in the process. After the Federation defeated his forces, Matan decides to use another Solarformer to cause the sun in the solar system to go supernova, killing his enemies, his supposed Kessok allies and his own forces, all at once.
Moral Event Horizon: Legate Matan is a slippery Manipulative Bastard who turned the otherwise peaceful Kessok against the Federation and has them construct House Arterius a massive fleet to fight for him. However, he loses all sympathy when he plans to destroy a sun to wipe out a helpless Kessok colony as well as all of his troops currently attacking it.
Narm: Starships can take downright absurd amounts of visible damage in this game, escalating to huge holes or entire sections of the ship(s) being blown away or just outright vaporized, and yet can still somehow fight, fly and fire weapons despite being reduced to a couple of scorched bits still tenuously hanging together by the grace of the structural integrity field. It's downright ridiculous, and doubly so when the part of the ship that has ceased to exist includes the warp core and antimatter containment pods, which tend to take the entire ship with them if they're even so much as breached.
Player Punch: The destruction of the U.S.S. Dauntless. Watching your old command be destroyed, even with all of the crew evacuated, is a terrible experience.
The Scrappy: Your First Officer, is universally despised among the fandom. One of the first things that happens in-game is you are given your own first officer, Saffi Larson. She never shuts up, and is after your commandplain as day. There are numerous mods ranging from "Saffi, be silent" to Saffi is the first to die when the ship gets hit by anything larger than a cornflake. A mod exists also that replaces her entirely, though it's still in beta.
Scrappy Mechanic: Hitting an allied starship more than three times in a single mission will cause an instant game over. This is made all the more annoying by the fact that the AI-controlled allies are only too happy to wander into your firing arc... and the fact that the person who removes you from command is Saffi.
That One Level: The final mission can range from maneagble to ridiculously difficult depending on your luck. Taking out the tachyon emitters is a breeze, but once the hybrids show up they can slice right through your allies and leave you defenseless by the time The Enterprise-E shows up. Even if you manage to survive the onslaught, you then have to face Matan with repairs disabled. This comes immediately after a battle where you're almost certain to have major damage to systems.
