you can customize your ship in the orbital dock to make it look less iffy... first restyle comes for free...
just found out, that you can walk around on your ship and visit the bridge (including captain's ready room with a fish tank), engineering and crew deck... probably left-overs from when they were planning to make it more of a team-on-a-ship game instead of everyone-gets-to-be-a-captain... click the downward pointing arrow to the right of the duty officers button at the top right of the screen and choose
visit bridge... to visit the other stations, go to the turbo lift on your bridge (works with shuttles as well... just less stuff to see obviously)
and this is my new ship, the U.S.S. Jabberwocky... current position: heading back to Romulan space... current status: on a mission to investigate an evil Reman plot... current captain: Captain Fens
that's the stage where you can get yourself a Defiant lookalike... and the turn rate is good enough to run circles around most enemies (still not good enough to make 90° or 45° weapons an alternative to the big angle ones, though)