I am sure that I saw a rule somewhere for incressing your crews skills? any ideas

You are right. It`s in Into the Storm, Upgrades for the ship.

I would suggest some sort of home rule method for improving crew rating.

I use a system where over a week or so the players attempt to train the crew. Each player can pick one skill to try and train the crew with. Command and Trade (Voidfarer) are required. However any other skills that the gm feels are appropriate, such as tech use, medicae, navigation, etc,etc. can also be used in addition. The players then make a roll, you tally up the levels of succeses and if they get at least 10 the crew rating will go up by one point. (dificulty of the roll is determined by current crew level. Also by using aquisition rolls you can buy successes, these represent live fire drills against asteroids etc. This will work up till level 50. Past that you need to do the same and make additional evaluate, inquiry, and acquisition rolls to find the deadwood in your crew and replace them with highly capable personnel. For us a level 30 crew is completely average, 40 is well trained, 50 is highly trained and experienced, above that you need crew who are naturally talented, highly trained, and experienced.

Hope this gives you some ideas.

Thanks for the Info I will have to look into it

I've come up with a house rule to handle increasing Crew Competence. It requires 1 week of in-game time and an Acquisition Test modified by the crew's current competence (the current Competence is a penalty on the roll). The Acquisition Test represents sinking resources into crew training, purchjasing better equiptment, and impriving the overall human recource infrastructure aboard the ship. On a successful role the Crew Comptetence increases by +5, with an additional +1 per degree of success. A few notes:

The week of training time must be spent in a region where equipment, tutors, and highly trained crew can be acquired (any high-tech planet or large space station).

The Acquisition Test receives a +5 Bonus for every additional week spent in training.

This roll is only made at the end of the training period, and the training must proceed uninterrupted. If you get attacked by Ork Raiders or leave the system on an Endeavour half way through you must start again.

Our group is finishing up refits on our new Light Crews, the Absolution , and part of her shake down cruise in Calixis will involve earning the "Craw Crew" upgrade; extensive and intense drills and training. Live-fire gunnery exercises, manuevering practices, boarding action simulations, emergency damage control drills, simulated enagements with our dynasty Frigate, etc etc. Not all of it will be scheduled either, so one day I, the captain, may just be sitting on the bridge, enjoying a jelique while reading some financial reports when suddenly I'm yelling for emergency evasive action, to roll out the guns and assume action stations. And everyone better snap to it fast and efficiently or there will be punishment.

Strict discipline will be enforced, I will run this ship like it was the Flagship of Battlefleet Calixis and the Segmentum Admiral is coming for inspection, punishments will be handed out as appropriate, mandatory hours of pennance prayer (must be done during what little free time they'll get, obviously), reduced or cut rum priviliges, or in significant cases, the whip and public lashings. I will grind my fresh ratings down and ride my new officers to the edge of endurance, I will make them hate me, despise me. I expect there to be quite a steady trickle of morale damage during the proceedings. However, when everything is complete I will congratulate them and make them realize their transformation from a random rabble to a close-knit team, and how **** proud I am to have one of the finest crews a Rogue Trader could ask for. A physical reminder of their transformation will be fresh new uniforms for both ratings and officers in the dynasty colors, (Crew Improvements, preferably good quality) proof that they are now a proud part of the dynasty.

Then a few days of relative rest and relaxation as we make our way to the ship and the crew's final test on the Shakedown, dealing with the pirates in the Fydae system, in part or in whole if we can manage. It'll be an excellent chance to test the ship in actual combat and will make us a pretty penny from the bounties Battlefleet Calixis posted.

So yeah, thats the kind of stuff I personally expect to be done in order to earn crack crew, lots of command checks, brutal training, and a careful eye on the grumbles and scowls of the ratings (a mutiny would be unfortunate). Definitely something both explorers and crew must work hard to earn.