My roleplaying group has a lot of trouble committing to a regular game night, at least while classes are going. With the semester having ended, and everyone home from college for a few weeks, we are finally going to get a couple of Rogue Trader scenarios in. However, since we are only going to get a couple in before the spring semesters start, we want our characters to start with a little more skills and such than usual. What would be a good amount of extra Starting Experience to allow for a good variety of skills, but not being too powerful?

Id would suggest a bit into rank 2, rank 1 is nice but you will end up spending most of that xp on stat advancements.

About half way into rank two gives you alot more skills and some interesting talents.

I've also found that rank 1 characters lack Exploration skills in many circumstances, and in some cases, also useful skills for ship-to-ship combat. Having immediate access to rank 2 should ease that considerably.

The main issue is that the PC's won't have the gear (Less of an issue in RT), or the Insanity/Corruption points appropriate to the level. I'd accelerate their earlier gains rather than starting with more immediately. Give them 1,000 per session until they hit a good cap. Rank 3 starts at 10k, so I'd stop at 8,000 exp, three sessions of 1,000. Maybe throw in a higher-than-normal number of insanity/corruption causing things.