If I am the Captain of the ship, I assume there are crew members.  Can you interact with them and choose them and such?  I assume they aren't as finely detailed as the companions in SWTOR, but I'm curious how crew members work in STO.

Thanks.

In short, yes there are crew members. There is a Bridge Officer system in place and I'l just throw the link which has much more detailed info than I can give on the forums, here:

http://www.stowiki.org/Bridge_officer

You don't interact with them like a companion in a Bioware game but you literally get to customize pretty much everything about them down to name, appearance, gender, skills, and equipment since you can choose to take them on Away Missions.

They comment on stuff/advance the storyline during missions, but no they don't have set personalities or personal stories like Kotor/ToR.

On the flip side as mentioned above, you can customize them in pretty much any way imaginable. They're very important in both space and ground combat, so make sure you keep them well equipped and improve their skills.

As others have said, bridge officers are a very important aspect of the game, and they have a lot of customization possible with them.

Another crew aspect are the Duty Officers, which give another angle in making your character feel like the captain of a ship.

http://www.stowiki.org/Duty_officer

+1 to what others said, but it's easier if you just hop in and try it for yourself, since it's f2p :)  Anyway, a few more details:

Bridge Officers, they don't have the detailed persona or back story like in TOR. In here, they are - with a lame description - part of your character, like the legendary items in LotRO. They get xp, they moving up in ranks if you promote them, they learn skills (which you can modify if you send them to train something else), etc. Actually they're more than half of your game, especially in space. If you jump in an escort and put your damage-oriented BOffs on the bridge, you'll be a dps, while your same captain in a cruiser with your other 5-6 BOffs turning into a tank. On ground they're your away team, so their skills are just as important there (and the gear you put on them)

Interaction: not much, they only talk in quests or if you wandering on your bridge and ask them about the sector assignments. But you can customize them as much as you want, uniform, looks (you get similar options as your own character creation), gear, skillset. You can even fire them and recruit new Officers any time.

Duty Officers are talk even less, and you only see them if you are in the ship, they are the wandering npc's inside. They make your 'crew', in the sense you ment in the OP. At first you get 100 DOffs, but you can increase their number. Of course you can only see a few of them inside, or else your ship interior would be overpopulated :)

DOff system is a whole game inside STO, basically a CCG where the Duty Officers are the cards. It's fun, and pretty useful too.

Thanks for the info guys.

So bridge offciers, do I only get 4 for the whole game or can I "purchase" more slots for them on my ship?

bridge crew size is based on the ships. at lv 50 i had 5 actual crew though my escort only used i think 4 total. you can kit them out and set each of their skills you wish. as well as design the cloths they wear (provided you unlock/buy other types not in the freebie bin) as for actually seeing them. you can see them via any away team mission/ground combat map or by visiting the actual ship bridge while in space.  other then that they do jack squat. i think they say the odd one liner during combat or something but i generally ignore it for pewpew.

though i havent played sto in months. i got bored of grinding borg every night for 8hrs rofl

Originally posted by ompgaming

Thanks for the info guys.

 

So bridge offciers, do I only get 4 for the whole game or can I "purchase" more slots for them on my ship?

Every ship has a predetermined bridge space, depending on the ship's level. BOff slots are not tied to the ships, it's tied to your captain.

As a f2p user you receive only 6 BOff slots until you reach level cap, which is only barely enough (biggest ships has 5 spaces on the bridge) so basically you'll have one crew and 1 extra officer for training or for release if you meet a better BOff.

Luckily you can buy more slots (don't know the exact price, cca. 2 bucks for 2 slots maybe). If you plan to have multiple builds, or wanna have more ships, it's a very useful purchase. (you can use multiple ships with 6 BOff's too, but then you have to move them manually between ships every time you change...)