I've only played the demo for a little while, so I'm sorry for the noob questions. I searched the forums and found some answers to my questions, but they were mostly threads from a year ago and (I'm hoping) things may have been improved.

My interest in the game kinda revolves around how Bridge Officers are handled. I like the idea of being able to put together a crew of my preference. So...

1) How much can you customize bridge officers at this time. What I read in year-old threads is that you can only customize their appearance/uniform, and cannot change race, gender, or traits. Is this still the case, and if so have Cryptic ever hinted at the possibility of allowing more customization in the future?

2) Assuming you still cannot customize bridge officers' race/gender, how likely is it that you can find the race/gender combination you want for your officers? Are there a lot of different choices available to be acquired without a lot of fuss, or is it hard to get the crew you want?

3) I noticed that there are different "quality" levels of bridge crew. Does that mean that if I find a "purple" or "blue" bridge officer, I'm pretty much stuck with that particular race/gender officer on my bridge because it's better than all of my other bridge officers? Like if I have a human female doctor that I like, I gave her a detailed character bio and I consider her my permanent CMO but then I find a purple Borg doctor, am I stuck with a Borg CMO if I want to take advantage of that higher quality character?

4) I read that you can only ever see 3 of your bridge officers on your ship, that you don't see your CMO in sickbay or your chief engineer in engineering, etc. Is this still true?

5) Do the bridge officers have a voice or personality at all, or are they just mute "items" to give you stat boosts?

Well
1 - This is still the case. But you can get BO's at faction star bases from vendors and you will be able to select from different races and genders. You are rewarded with BOs from time to time and these are random types

2- See answer to #1

3- Quality is only about ground traits(90% of the time) and certain level 3 Powers (each type of power ranges from 1 to 3) You don't have to use them and some can go for high prices on the exchange.

4-As you level up you can have more active officer slots available and you can have many candidates that are not active. By Captains level you can have 8 active BOs I believe. And they are assigned to BO stations in space and to away team slots on the ground but don't show up anywhere else on your ship except the bridge.

5- They have no voice but each has a biography section you can fill out to customize them.

Just to add on to the already good answers:

1 and 2) Correct you cannot change race, gender, or traits. If you want a different race, gender, or trait for a BO you'll have to get a new one. There are no plans to change this because there is no need to. You can purchase any BO with a specific race and gender. Traits are usually tied to the race which is why you cannot change them.

3) You can get any bridge officer in any rarity. Whoever is your CMO or any other position is up to you. Rarity only determines the effectiveness of the traits and nothing more. So if you have a human BO and want it to be rare just go to the tailor, save the settings, then buy a new human BO that is rare, load the settings of your old BO and its essentially the same person just with rare traits.

Now there are going to be some BOs that are unique, such as Borg, Reman, and Breen. They aren't necessarily better, just unique. This means they have traits/skills that other BOs won't get. You really won't get a huge advantage by having this types of BOs.

4) Three is not the limit. It depends on the bridge you are using. Bigger bridges show more BOs. You still cannot place BOs where you want on the ship (such as your CMO in sick bay) but there are plans to add this feature.

5) Voices for the BOs existed a long time ago but were removed due to problems. There are plans to integrate them again. BOs do not have a personality because it is a bit difficult to add it, however I wouldn't be surprised if at some point in the future of STO they add this type of feature. For now there are not plans for BO personality.

Thanks for the info. Sounds OK, but it seems they could do more with bridge officers to make them more interesting.

One other question -- is there a first officer station on ships at higher levels? I saw another really old forum post saying that first officers were in development, but I haven't found any info after that.

Yeah they could do more, and I'm sure they will in the future. There are just more important things that need to be done with the game now.

There is no first officer station. What you were reading was an idea for a first officer system. This system allows players to promote a BO to first officer. That first officer can eventually be promoted to captain and become another playable character for you. However I'm not sure if it is in development yet, it might be. There were some details they needed to work out first.

One of the points of the bridge officer system is trolling around to find the right gender/race combo you want. If you do not recieve one from your pool you get through promotions you can also acquire them from the exchange.

BO powers are not a major factor until you get into blue and purple ones or the limited time ones you get from the feature episodes (like the tractor repulsor skill from the reman BO released during the last story arc). You can retrain any skill you wish to skills that fit better with your play style and you can exchange them with other players to train them in lev 3 skills you dont have access to.

As for personality, the dev's have dropped numerous hints about adding this feature in probably during season 5. You will be able to designated department chiefs and their personalties may effect how well they function in away teams and special stat bonuses to your ship.

Example: You have a cmo that has an aversion to romulans/remans and you just acquired the new reman bo. So now your cmo may refuse to treat that officer of injuries or effect the use of their science skills when in space.

From recent dev talk it sounds mostly like the first officer system and maybe department heads in general won't be part of the initial duty roster, but a later addon. Hard to know for sure, since every dev post on the matter changes what we "know" a little bit and the whole thing is in early development flux.

As for the bridge thing, STOwiki's bridge articles have a good job mentioning how many bridge officers will display on different bridges. The first one you get only shows 3, but as you get new ships you can fit bigger bridges in the ship costume editor, some of them show up to 9. The more expensive bridge packs on the C-store go a bit more, the Emissary pack shows 11 on most and 12 on the Unity bridge, and Ambassadors get a special set of bridges, at least one of those goes up to 12 as well.

I have found at least one bridge officer that just never displays on the bridge, no matter how big it is or how many spaces it has, as well. I'm not sure if that's limited to the holographic officer or if there's others like that.