Can anyone tell me the effects of having a Good or Best quality crew is? The book talks about aquiring them, but doesn't actually tell you any in-game effects this may have. For example:

Our group was starting fresh and managed to acquire a ship majority of Good-quality crew. What would this do? More resistance to Morale-loss or bonuses to certain ship tests?

Their RT also has an extensive Military background so he hired on a small (500) regiment of Best-quality armsmen to provide shipboard security and muscle. Would this mean they are better able to defend against boarding actions or quell mutinies? If so, what kind of bonuses would they have? What happens if you upgrade them all to power armor and boltguns (besides looking like little space marines)?

We looked all through the book and can't find any kind of effect any of this would have, or what the point of wasting Acquisition rolls on equipping them with say flak armor and hellguns would gain you. I realize as a GM whatever we say goes, but there should be 'some' kind of guidelines for this kind of stuff. I mean, there isnt even a starting point to go off of from what I see. If there is, can someone point me to a page so I can figure something out?

Getting better quality armsmen? Equipping them all with Power Armour and Boltguns? Get armsmen with higher stats armed with better equipment to take along with you when you go out and about on planets. Competent Crews will get you skill 30 armsmen; Crack crews skill 40, Veteran crews skill 50, et cetera. Competent armsmen are probably using the Hired Gun statline, Crack armsmen the Oathsworn Bodyguard statline, and so on.

The Crew can take actions in Space Combat just as the PCs can. Each turn of space combat the crew can make three actions, and they roll at the skill levels listed for the crew quality.

Outside Space Combat it's a safe bet that on a ship with tens of thousands of crew there will be someone who has whatever skill the PCs lack (apart from common sense exemptions like Forbidden Lore etc). So if they have an average quality crew, then any time the PCs lack a skill they can get an NPC to do it who has a skill of 30. So the NPC shuttle pilot rolls skill 30 to land the dropship, the NPC armsmen roll Willpower 30 to avoid pinning and advance in the face of enemy fire, and so on.

I'd represent hiring a group of elite specialists like the Armsmen you mentioned by upping the Crew Quality for one specific task. Hopefully we'll eventually get official rules for this sort of thing, but with FFG release dates that could be some time coming.

Whle the advice above is certainly good, I'd be careful about letting the PCs acquire a crew that outperforms them in their individual fields of expertise. A wealthy or lucky RT can certainly have a crew that has skills in the 50+ range in theory, but that's just going to lead to him relying on NPC skills all the time. The PCs are supposed to be leaders and senior officers, and if they rely too much on subordinates they should regret it. The Peter Principle doesn't work well in the canonical 40K universe.

You could easily run whole adventures around the players' efforts to keep their elite crew happy with them, suppress mutinous inclinations, and prevent skilled ratings from being bribed away or pressganged by other ships. Worse, the Imperial Navy almost certainly behaves like the British did during the Age of Sail - essentially kidnapping the best crew from any civilian ship that they encounter when they feel like it. Saying No to the Navy ship should be a challenge even if you're capable of beating them at the moment.

Equally, uber-crews should be few and far between, and building one could easily qualify as an extended Endeavor. Just buying one with gelt is fairly unrealistic, although money can certainly help maintain a happy ship. Regular upkeep checks are probably also in order for really good crews, as you'll steadily lose people to death, injury, desertion, and even age over time. Probably much easier to get (and keep) smaller units of elite specialists like the armsmen mentioned above, or a lance battery crewed by exceptionally well-drilled ratings.

What I didn't see is how to give crews experience.

If you're using their stats "on average", which makes sense, a Veteran Crew should average their scores with the Poor quality 20% riff-raff they had to press gang to make up losses, which may indicate the overall Crew is no longer "Veteran".

Ok, but how do "Good" crew become "Crack" crew? I don't see anything on giving Crew experience or otherwise improving them other than purchasing them "prepackaged" with the initial Ship purchase.

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Aquisition to aquier better crew... or aquisition for further crew training?

An endevor that will result not in PF but in higher crew compitancy?

Maxim C. Gatling said:

Several possible approaches to the subject. Gaining experience might be a good alternate or extra benefit from an Endeavor, especially one that focuses on Exploration or Military objectives - although depending on your ship's specialties any objective type could work. A crew full of zealous Redemptionists might improve while performing Creed objectives, or a smuggler for Criminal workouts.

Potential downgrades for taking in too many FNGs would be a Misfortune unto itself, one logically triggered by heavy losses. Fixing it would require concerted training efforts and/or finding better-quality recruits.

Another approach to upgrading crew would be to simply treat the quality bump as a starship component with SP cost equal to the difference in costs between the levels. From their, make acquisition tests as usual to improve, assuming you're someplace where you can buy (bribe, hire, headhunt, etc) better voidsmen, or training for your existing ones.