More to the point, why would a holographic ship need a crew at all? Give the ship itself a mind. That gets into another suspension-of-disbelief-destroyer: a ship's computer can run a program that has free will and independent consciousness - that is a person, in other words - but the computer itself does not possess those…
You suspect correctly. I don't know exactly how long I was away; I know I let my subscription lapse some time before STO went F2P, and I know my KDF officer (who's actually Orion) started at level 1. Should I file a support ticket to get my Lt. Cmdr. ship? 80,000 dilithium is kind of steep. Ahh, for the halcyon days when…