Is there any way to do this I have looked and couldn't find any ?

YokuniCat said:

Core, page 226. There you have values for Adquisition rolls based on Crew "Craftsmanshp".

ItS p. 163 also helps: crew improvements. Not to mention there's a piece of archeotech which improves the crew rating by 5 (cogitator interlink if memory serves me right).

Also, if one of the explorers is the ship's Chief Bosun (take a look at into the Storm) you increase Crew Rating by +5.

YokuniCat said:

There are no proper rules for improving the base crew rating. It's an annoying oversight.

Iku Rex said:

Yes, there are: Core, page 226. It's just an Adquisition roll.

"The GM can make something up based on the acquisition system" is not a helpful answer.

Let's say you have a regular Competent crew. How do you improve them? Acquisition rolls you say? What, exactly, are the modifiers? How do you calculate the final Crew Rating? What about training? Experience?

Iku Rex said:

Dude, is on the corebook , I already told the page number twice on this thread where Crew adquisition is discused.

Availability:

Common unless you are in a hive world, where is Abundant.

Scale:

This modifier isn't used.

Craftsmanship:

Poor: CR 20

Common: CR 30

Good: CR 40

Best: CR 50

If you faile the roll, you have to move to another world, since you can't do it twice on the same plase.

Simple as that, and everything is explained on the book.

Maese Mateo said:

Untrue. You couldn't even answer my questions above.

Maese Mateo said:

Actually, it depends on the world. And this is the rule for replenishing lost crew. The default assumption is that base crew rating remains the same, whether you started with an Incompetent or a Veteran crew, and whether the new recruits are hive world gangers or well-trained navy voidsmen. There are, after all, no clear rules for lowering or increasing crew rating based on the quality or number of fresh recruits...

Maese Mateo said:

Actually, the single sentence you insist constitutes clear and proper rules on improving crew rating mentions that the GM can "choose" to include a Scale modifier when replenishing crew. Just as he can "choose" to include a quality modifier.

Maese Mateo said:

And where on page 226 does it say that? Could it perhaps be a house rule you made up to cover something not in the rules...?

And what is the "craftsmanship" of an Elite (60) crew? It can't be Best...

Maese Mateo said:

(The rules for replenishing crew refers to the regular acquisition rules, which makes frequency of acquisitions up to the GM. There's no hard "never twice on the same world" rule.)

Maese Mateo said:

No it's not.

Even if the Core Rulebook had proper rules for improving crew rating with acquisitions (which it doesn't), that's hardly enough. A crew should generally get better over time. But apparently no one but the PCs is capable of learning anything unless they're showered with money. Or maybe not even then - the assumption seems to be that the best you can hope for if you want improvement is to replace your entire crew.

What Maese has written is how I interpreted it from the Corebook. It is rather vague, and therefore open to GM guidelines. In my view, the acquisition represents the investments in specialists and extra training required to improve the Crew Rating. There is the time factor as well, which if you loosely interpret the rules in BFK based off the initial expenditure of SP to buy crew at ratings (5 for Crack, 15 for Veteran, either 30 or 45 for Elite depending on the GM), you can then figure out the time it takes to train the crew up to that level.

It comes back to the game being a sandbox, both for the players and the GM. If that's a serious problem for either set, perhaps finding another system might be the best idea.

Larkin said:

+1

Nothing on those rules says you can't replenish your Crew with more competent people than the ones you previously had.

About: "And where on page 226 does it say that? Could it perhaps be a house rule you made up to cover something not in the rules...?"

Battlefleet Koronus, p. 126.

About: "A crew should generally get better over time"

No, they shouldn't. They are nameless and unimportant NPCs and the Warhammer 40k setting doesn't give a **** about them. In Mechanicus words, they are simple flesh cogs that added togheter power something better and greater (a starship). Most of them have been serving on the same ship for generation over generarion, if they didn't improve in 500 years, they won't improve in 10 (unless you fire every single one of them and get a better crew... or like Larkin sugestedd, you actively dedicate time and money in their training).

Maese Mateo said:

Nobody's saying otherwise.

The question is, how do you handle that, rules-wise? The published rules don't say.

Maese Mateo said:

Ok, so we've established that it's not in the Core Rulebook.

It does make sense to use the BK troop quality acquisition modifiers for starship crews. Note that those rules are different from Maese Mateo's suggested house rule above.

Maese Mateo said:

Yes, they should.

There are exceptions of course, which is why I said "generally". If a cargo ship has been going back and forth between two worlds for the last 500 years the crew will probably have gotten "better", but not necessarily at anything useful to a rogue trader captain. And if a captain keeps replacing lost crew with press-ganged farmers and convicts the crew may never have a chance to become truly effective.

But that should not be the default assumption. Men becoming tougher and better through surviving hardship and battles is in fact a common trope of the 40K setting. (For example, it's the main premise of the Last Chancers .) People go through training/education, but it's very much secondary to hard earned experience. A guard regiment or starship crew doesn't achieve the status of "veteran" by reading textbooks, attending exclusive seminars or listening to high-priced motivational speakers.

For Rogue Trader specifically, Wooden Ships and Iron Men is an important inspiration, and again crews are expected to improve. Give Jack Aubrey or Horatio Hornblower a crew consisting mostly of rejects and landsmen, and by the time the ship returns from a dangerous mission on the far side of the world said crew will have been turned into proper sailors. And not because the captain had them attending costly lectures in every harbor visited!

The very name of the best available starting crew in the RPG should be a hint. "Veteran". Defined as "a person with long experience of a particular activity." Or I can quote BK (page 126): "Veterans have fought countless battles, lost friends and brothers-in-arms, and have seen the best and worst humanity has to offer, becoming some of the best warriors and soldiers on the field of battle." Sounds like a rogue trader crew returning from a long tour beyond the borders of the Imperium to me. Whereas ships like the Gethsemane from BK have a "green" crew, "new to service", and so they're not as good as more experienced crews.

Pg 163 ITS.

Best quality Crew Improvements is the way you upgrade crew rating.

It's pretty clear, but easy to miss.

Also, brilliantly enough in the chart on the next page that denotes the rarity for said upgrade, there is no entry for the Stormtrooper Detachment upgrade... brilliant.

CaptainStabby said:

Yes, there is, but they made a typo and put it as Staravar Laser Macrobattery, it's on the errata. Intead, it should say "Stormtrooper Detachment" (the rarity is still Extremely Rare).

Ah, cool. I looked in the Errata and completely missed that. I figured it would be Extremely Rare+ anyhow.

Cheers sir!

CaptainStabby said:

You think this is a one time thing or could it be done on different instances?

Like say.. your at Generic Imperial World.. lets do an Acquisition test for Crew Improvements.

Then say you meander over to Port Wander and say.. well do and Acquisition check for Crew Improvements?