I must say I'm really intrigued by this idea. Could be really fun. As an avid board gamer I know of some other games that are probably similar. I'm thinking it will be something like the following games:

The Battlestar Galactica boardgame (and Pegasus Expansion) - Each player chooses a character to play, all with different strengths and abilities. Attributes are in catergories like Leadership, Engineering, Science, Piloting, etc. They work together to defeat various events that occur, trying to get Galactica to the next jump so that eventually...hopefully they get to Earth. In this game, 1-3 players are randomly assigned as Cylons and secretly try to work against the others to stop them from succeeding (this part would not be in the Trek game, but the rest could be similar).

Last Night on Earth - A zombie board game. Haven't actually played this myself (as I hate zombies) but seen it played many times. Everyone has their own character with specific abilities and one player plays as the zombies, while all the other players try to survive the game together. There are a few different scenarios in it with different levels of difficulty.

The Marvel Super Heroes board game - Probably not as much like this, but it could have elements of it. This is not a co-op game, but with a bit of tweaking it could be. Basically each player chooses a team with 4 pre-set characters in it (Avengers, X-men, F4 and Marvel Knights). They then compete to deal with different crises happening in New York, facing villains. Each player also plays the Arch-nemesis to one of their opponents teams.

Adding in the combat dials will allow for a lot more tweaking in terms of the abilities that could be assigned to them. I'm thinking that each person will choose a crew member to use for the mission (which could be different each time) and that as with BSG, certain types of crew need to be included each time (eg. Command, Security, Engineering, Science, Medicine).

Can't wait to get some more details on it!

Pandemic is another popular co-op game.

I can imagine what It'll be like, but I have no rules to cite. I think the OP is in the right ballpark.

I'm thinking that there will probably be scenario play like you get in Arkham horror, where the mission is determined randomly, and instructs you to arrange the play area according to that mission.

As a possible alternative to the "Choose a character" option, I could also see the players getting turns directing the figures on the board without associating them to a single player (all players share all units) but that's a little out there.

I also expect to see things like special tech objects that have dials. Maybe there will be a set that has a warp core, and it can have a dial that interacts with various mission cards? (overloading... Wesley & the Traveller... Engineering challenge to regenerate dilthium or restart the core...)

Maybe another set comes with a transporter pad that can be used to various effects (the thing often malfunctioned and caused strange events)

Holodeck is an obvious choice for a set, and what object is good for that game? why ARCH of course!

I'm really hoping there's a classic Original series set that has a pike's peak map, where Torn-shirt Kirk gets to fight the Gorn. Since Pike's Peak makes so many appearances, there's plenty of scenarios to go along with it.

And I could see a bridge set, that allows you to set up various bridges by assigning the map and arranging the consoles, that would have an element that would interact with the Starship battles game.

I mean I can dream up gazillions of things they could do; I'm on the edge of my seat t find out what they will do~!

Yeah. I think I'm actually looking forward to this more than Web of Spidey (and WoS is looking like one of the best sets ever).

Christmas seems like a long way away!

Looks like we have a tentative name for the game:

"Star Trek: Expeditions"

I was really hoping it would be called "Away Team" as that is a lot more trekkie, but maybe they can't use that name because there was a PC game with that name?

We should see a cover for the game box at the San Diego Comic Con too. Cool!