EMH...Why stop there?

Well in our current campaign the U.S.S.Excalibur is equipped with holoemitters throughout the ship although we do not have "extra" holo-personnel.

You should reduce living quarters, replicator and medical bays while increasing computer cores and ODN/Neural circuitry relays. I remember reading somewhere that the computer onboard the ship is equipped to automatically raise shields, assess threats and fire back with phasers when necessary. Photon torpedoes still require humanoid controls due to their destructive power.

I just thought of a problem, let's say we have a crew of 100 plus 50 holoprograms operating, the computer core is damaged and leaves only one functional. What would happen if the core was "overused" by the holoprograms, would they slowdown like today's computers? Or would they flicker on and off?

Just read in a couple months time Robert Picardo's going to have a book publish called "the Hologram Handbook". It's going be written in the style of 'the Doctor', and is "a holograms survival guide to deal with living beings"(paraphrasing, can't find my Previews). Anyway, the reason I bring it up: This will allow additional 'angles' and 'textures' for holo-characters. This book should be addressing the important holo-issue: work, relations, the 'off-switch':D. I say what a couple months...your oppinion may change on 'holos'...probably both positive and negative.:)

Cmmdr JT Wayland:
well since the andromeda class is being considered for use for further testing of holographic personnel, you might as well use the andromeda class if not the prototype vessel itself.

it could have been seriously damaged in the breen attack on earth and was still getting repairedwhen the war ended it could have been refitted for its new mission.

for your "romy" you could have it that this is the "failed" work of starfleet engineers who were working on the "sentient hologram problem" (moriarty) .
the "sentience"/program could be transferred to the body but it still was a robot not a living thing.

the drones(robots) could just be computer controlled/linked (as would"romy" ) they would be nothing more than like the charactures in a holodeck all that would be needed is computer links to download the program/characture to the bot then the bot takes it from there eliminating the holdeck problem of the holodecks being shutdown in emergency situations,
the bots computer systems should also have the bio-neural gel system that the ships do (but that means tey could get "sick"to)

the "charactures"/programs should be on an entirely different computer core than what operates the vessel, just to test out the feasibilty of the project the size would be up to you..

on a different note..
the holoship from Insurrection would be the vessel to use for testing a large number of holocrew. maybe a little refitting is needed to make it a multipurpose vessel (give it more systems than being just a large mobile holodeck) sensors,labs and so on but, the ship wide holo system is already installed..

and yet even a different note..
my group had a field day with holosystems throughout a ship they came up with mindnumbing ideas such as "anti borg crewmembers" the borg can't hurt them but boy, could they mess up the borg..or a couple of my favorites EHH (emergency hullplating hologram) "hull breach on deck 3 section 4" zzt not anymore...
and the ol' fake shuttle trick.. bad guys gets into shuttle takes off and leaves the shuttle bay "see ya wouldn't want to be ya."
well I'll end that here...