To anyone who knows, and @David Mack in particular: Spoiler: Minor spoiler for Oblivion's Gate Am I wrong in assuming that the bridge crew of the da Vinci (Wong, Haznedl, and Shabalala) are all now full Lieutenants (given that they were Lt. (j.g.)s in the final SCE book which was set some 9/10 years earlier)? Similarly, is Security Chief Hawkins still a Chief Petty Officer or has he been bumped up to Senior Chief or Master Chief? And to finish off this thought: I was under the impression that Lt. Cmdr. Mor glasch Tev was promoted to full Commander at the same time as Gomez and Corsi, but I guess I was mistaken (which is, of course, no big deal, I just wanted to mention it).
Tev's promotion track was derailed by his insubordination in his early days on the da Vinci, so it's completely possible that he remains a lieutenant commander.
I'm going to be honest -- and it's not KRADs fault because he was working with the template of the 'verse -- but I have major issues with the idea that anyone other than the CO and maybe the XO on a ship as small as the DaVinci would be as senior as a LCDR, with maybe a handful of ENS and LTs. The absence of any (Senior) Chiefs is particularly notable.
Well, actually, the da Vinci was one of the few ships in Star Trek with a crew so clearly divided into officers and enlisted personnel - helped, I think, by the fact that there were only 40 something crewmembers.
That's a valid point. But it's still rather heavy on senior grade officers IMO. For instance, US Navy mine counter measures ships have a crew of around 80-90, IIRC and only eight commissioned officers (CO, XO, ChEng, 1st LT/NAV, SUPPO, OPS, DC Asst/Asst ChEng), but also have five chief petty officers (COMMO, Asst SUPPO, Asst ENG, Bosun and DC) in addition to several petty officers and several dozen enlisted crew.