I know it's my own fault for not paying enough attention to the duty officer tutorial mission thing, but I'm kind of lost here and I need help.

So I am a Commander and only seem to have 16 duty officers. Seems a little light to me since I've opened a couple of the duty officer packs I got from leveling up. What's more concerning, however, is that I can't do most Assignments as they require kinds of duty officers that I don't seem to have, such as a Bartender. How do I get the neccessary duty officers? Any help is appreciated.

Head to Starfleet Academy. In the round building near the water, there's a personnel officer. Talk to them and take the General Recruitment (gives a pack of random doffs), Tactical, Engineering, Science, and Civil Corps recruitments (2 random doffs of the specific devision). There's also Vulcan, Andorian, and Telarite exchange officers around the grounds, their missions give you one random doff of the specified race.

These assignments all have cooldowns between 24 and 36 hours, but if you stay on top of them you can get a bit over 30 doffs a week.

There's some occasional cultural exchange missions around various sectors. Some require giving up one of your doffs for one of theirs, others are just a freebie.

When you have a large enough crew to be comfortable, you can trade in 5 of one quality for 1 of the next quality for a dilithium fee, or 1 for 3 of the next quality lower for free. This is done through other options from the same contact as most recruitment.

Thank you so much. Now all I have to do is wait for a day for my general duty officers and 2 days for all the others.

Apart from cultural exchange, just play the game and level up, every 10 levels IIRC you'll get rewarded by more doffs.

While at the Academy, check your map. You will find 3 Personnel Officers.

There is an Andorian and a Tellerite PO outside of Ferra's office, to the North East, and a Vulcan NW of the main building.

If you get into a Fleet, certain projects require doffs from the Fleet members. If you donate, just cruise back to the Academy to keep ur doffs at a good level.

He has a total of 16 doffs and you suggest to donate them to fleet projects?
Man...