The first few shots from the mostly-complete Lower Deck of my new Firefly-inspired Mallard class are posted at wwgallery. You can find the new Mallard Class gallery here:
http://wwgallery.pcinfoman.com/thumbnails.php?album=124

I'm going to add a few more closeups of various things, but this will give you the idea of the size of the ship. Keep in mind, the Middle Deck is longer by almost a foot.

Sweet Robby, that's coming along nicely ! Keep those pics coming, you'll catch up to me in no time . I really like the larger airlock, and the large cargo bay, can't wait to see more.

Looks promising, can't wait to see the rest of the ship!

Are you planning to do anything to even out the texture on the floor in that big cargo hold? That shading is quite eye-catching...

Hmm, wouldn't it be nice if someone whipped up a little program that generates an appropriately shaded floor pattern for any size room? Shouldn't be too horribly hard to do. You have four 2x2 shaded corner pieces, eight half-shaded side pieces plus their mirror images, and 25 unshaded center tiles with 8 choices of orientation and mirroring each. Seems like you should be able to come up with an almost random looking arrangement pretty easily.

(Not that I'm volunteering, mind you! )

Looks very cool, I like the layout and build so far. It helps keep me cutting and gluing on my FL build ....

Egads robby, you've been busy!

That's gonna be one hell of an impressive build, Robby!

With the super long walls in the cargo section, is there any way to prevent that slight outwards bowing of the walls?

Mallard class?

Eck

Other than that, looks good.

Yeah one of the reasons i went with the multiple cargo holds on the barloz was i didn't like all of the open space, it looked too empty, and i liked the idea of having sectioned cargo areas so you could close things off, maybe make one refrigrated, etc. I thought it gave it more versitility. In the end i was glad it did it story wise in the RPG, the PC's are carting around two different groups, they have a group of Jawas living in a cargo hold, untill they find a planet to settle on, and pay for the transport by "fixing" the ship and in the other they rescued some slaves that were living in another for a few months till they could get them home. It was kind of cool to have them go, well well move everything out of the cargo bay on the lower deck be sectional, and let the Ishtib live in one till we can get them to Tibrin.

But i really like the smooth lines on the side, the long straight edge with no bumps or docks, makes it look nice.

The stairs amke more sense now, and look okay (still think they would be a waste on a space ship, i agree with your idea of designing like a submarine, every once of space is at a premium, that big of stairs just seems to take up to much room, not knocking you it was the one thing i didn't like about RF, the stairs at that size seemed wrong to me).

What are the other crates? the yellowish, and the kind of blueish in the corners?

Hey, Robby -

Just saw the other two pics you posted in the "Out of Disk Space" thread of your Mallard class ship.

First off, great windows! They really add to the atmoshphere of a Lounge. However, is a Medbay really the thing you want to be looking at whilst relaxing?

For the "wasted space" under the stairs, what about adding a storage door entrance to that space from inside the Medbay?

Another thought: why not kitbash the stairs to be only 5' wide? Shouldn't be too tough, and would save space.

[edit] Or, for future builds/designs, say the space under the stairs is for the landing gear.

Why use stairs at all? I'm going with ladders. We'll see how it plays, but it was easer for me doing my layout.

Well, for this tech level, transporters aren't approrpriate. And for this type of ship, I don't think elevators are either. The Firefly universe is really only marginally beyond our own tech level, and their ships reflect it.

The creator of the show (Joss Whedon, of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel fame - but don't judge it based off that) made a serious effort to make sure that Firefly didn't become a "particle of the week" show; very rarely is technology a major part of an episode, and even in the one where it was central (Out of Gas, my favorite one), the part in question looks more like a shock absorber than anything fanciful (like a crystal widget thingie from ST:TNG or some such).

The fusion engine of the ship isn't all glowy and lights and energy fields and stuff. It looks like, well, a big car engine, or a rocket engine or something. The ship's bridge looks lower tech than the Millenium Falcon, and the Medlab looks like something more out of CSI than Trek or Star Wars or even Babylon 5.

Its pretty cool, actually. There is a scene at the end of one episode (which leads into the next) where two of the characters are in the cargo bay, sitting on the platform that runs up and around the bay, chatting - looking down over a herd of cattle that they're transporting. Its _that_ kind of universe.

Looking good, robby! The catwalk was a great idea.