[Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

I found a thread with a firefly class ship somewhere in the long 9 page thread.

Here's my take on it. Most of them are talking that the Serenity is a 1000 ton ship. This is incorrect. According to the Ship Specs in the Serenity RP Firefly ships are 2400 tons measuring 191ft (63.67 yds) x 128ft (42.67 yds) x 53ft (17.67yds) This of course is converting feet to yds at 3ft/1yd.

other then that they look fine. However I need to know a few minor details. Lets assume that the sublight engine is a rotary reactionless what would the maneuver engines be? I'm thinking maybe a fusion engine that uses hydrogen with ramrocket in the atmosphere.

Habitat wise there are 5 cabins (2 doubles) in the forward section and 4 doubles in the rear section + a single bed sickbay. Would I assume that the excess empty space in both those habitat sections be steerage cargo?

Since the cargo bay is sealed I would consider it a habitat that is strictly steerage.

The Shuttle dock can't really be considered a hanger bay since it is not sealed. It's just airlock->airlock

Also with the shuttles attached there are 5 airlocks (1 big main one at the cargo bay) without the shuttles your looking at 7 airlocks.

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

Welp, according to here , it's only 292.5 tons, fully loaded, which would put it at SM +7. Unfortunately, plausibility wasn't a real strong design goal for Mr. Whedon. Honestly, its not like you really need scientific accuracy to enjoy the series. But it does make it harder to pin hard facts down accurately in order to model it for roleplaying purposes. Anywho, seems SM could be anywhere between SM +7 and SM + 9. I'd use SM +8, but you're free to use a larger size if you wish.

I would say the main sublight engine is a Hot Reactionless, considering if you light it off in an atmosphere you get a stream of fire behind you. Plus Rotary Reactionless don't get the necessary thrust to get her out of atmo. Two Hot Reactionless Engines will get you 2Gs of thrust, more than enough to hit orbit.

I would just make the engines on the sides of a Firefly class a pair of Fusion Torches with the ram-rocket option, if you're determined to use the ram-rocket thing. Otherwise, I'd just make them special effects of the same Hot Reactionless drives, handwaving that they are in two separate parts of the ship. There are references to fuel cells in the pilot, so thats your power plant. You need one for each Hot Reactionless, as I said, I would have two of each. Slap on an engine room, and perhaps an extra fuel tank for the Fuel Cells, although that wouldn't be strictly necessary, and I don't recall there ever being fuel tanks in the show or movie.

I would say you definitely have some actual Cargo Bay sections, to account for the huge doors in the rear. Spaceships doesn't say that Cargo Bays aren't or can't be pressurized, so I think its safe to assume that Serenity's Cargo Bay is in fact an actual GURPS style Cargo Bay.

For shuttle docking I would slap on two External Clamps, and call it good. Let them hold the same size ship a Hangar would be able to(100 tons for SM +9, 30 tons for SM + 8, which means the shuttles are either SM + 5 or + 6.

Habitats I would model as a Habitat in the Front and the Rear sections,

Firefly Class SM +8
Front
1 Light Alloy
2 Control Room
3 Habitat
4 Cargo Hold
5 Cargo Hold
6 Cargo Hold
Middle
1 Light Alloy
2 Hot Reactionless Drive
3 External Clamp
4 External Clamp
5 Cargo Hold
6 Cargo Hold
[core] Fuel Cell
Rear
1 Light Alloy
2 Habitat
3 Hot Reactionless Drive
4 Engine Room
5 Cargo Hold
6 Cargo Hold
[core] Fuel Cell
Artificial Gravity, FTL Comms, $ 14,000,000, 355 Tons Cargo Capacity(7 Cargo Holds, 1 sacrificed cabin in rear habitat.)

I'd say that you could use your fuel cells to power your reactionless engines at full capacity(max sublight speed) a few times before needing to refuel, but so long as they have even a little bit of fuel left theres enough to run the ships systems. Not very realistic, but thats what the show says. You still need to build and buy the two shuttle craft, and I recommend the discount pricing guides found in Transhuman Space, pg. 190.

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

In GURPS Spaceships terms, the RPG treats it as a stardrive, of the warp variety, with the pseudo-velocity switch. It simply has the quirk that it doesn't actually reach FTL velocities: it tops out around 0.02c. This is still considerably faster than what you could manage on the reaction drives alone.

That's how the RPG depicts it.

(For what it's worth, I wrote that entire chapter in the RPG. Some of it was altered in editing, however, which introduced some inconsistencies.)

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

why does the Serenity RP differ greatly from the wiki? Since as above I mentioned the ship specs stats the it's 2,400 tons yet the wiki says 292 tons

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

The "official" statistics came out well after the RPG, and are flagrantly stupid:

* the listed engine power is 1/10 the listed weight: how does she accelerate and maneuver the way she does?

* the listed weight is less than an aircraft half Serenity's size (cf. C-5 Galaxy), yet "Vera" can't reliably puncture its hull,

and so on. It's clear that Zoic threw together some numbers and techno-babble, without any concept of what they meant.

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

Calling the man stupid after stating a Mass Ratio of 1.01 was your intent in the thread on the cruiser may not be entirely fair. I find that low of a Mass Ratio just as silly for a reaction drive as a super-light Serenity or under-powered Serenity.

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

Or maybe he thought. "hey, the tonnage isn't much heavier then a c5 galaxy, lets add a 0"

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

There are precedents.

When the statistics for the Starship Enterprise (NCC-1701)were being generated early in the creation process of TOS they made it approx. the same length as the nuclear aircraft carrier USS Enterprise.

Then they made it twice as heavy because that made it sound more impressive.

The problem is that carrier is a solid sort of rectangle/prism shape that holds a lot more volume than the the saucer hull, engineering hull and nacelles shape of the 1701.

Also, even though the insides of the starship was obviously more spacious than the comparable spaces on the carrier it was still only providing space for 1/10th the crew.

The result of this is that when the shipbuilding system for the Star Trek RPG came out the mass of the engines for the Constitution-class Starship had to take up 170,000 tons out of the ship's 190,000 tons.

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

I know this isn't the thread for it, but instead of starting a new one I thought I would post here. Has anyone statted up the crew from Serenity? I have searched and I get a thousand posts, but none with stats that I have found (I admittadly hit the most promising titled ones and skipped the rest).

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

There was a thread which contained stats for the Serenity crew. As I recall, there was some contention about the power levels of the characters.

Did a search, here are some relevant threads:
Jayne Malcolm Reynolds River

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

Thanks Zurich

Re: [Spacehips] Firefly / Serenity (TV Series)
 

Yup. In FASATrek, the warp engines were usually at least 80-90% the mass of most ships. Treknobabble explanation was 'shielding'.

As a result, Klingon engines were usually somewhat lighter than everyone else's, because Klingons weren't as concerned with crew safety in their secondary hulls (where the engines were located)....:)